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Jv^ujlU ' /m<0*<uK$L 



ACRES 
OF DIAMONDS 

BY 

RUSSELL H. CONWELL 



PRESIDENT OF TEMPLE UNIVERSITY 
PHILADELPHIA 



HIS LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS 

BY 

ROBERT SHACKLETON 

WITH AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 




HARPER & BROTHFRS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 






Acres of Diamonds 



Copyright, 191S. by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States of America 

Published October, 1915 



«QV -6 1915 

©CI.A414449 ^ 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

Acres of Diamonds 3 



HIS LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS 

I. The Story of the Sword ........ 63 

II. The Beginning at Old Lexington 76 

III. Storyof the Fifty-seven Cents 88 

IV. His Power as Orator and Preacher .... 94 

V. Gift for Inspiring Others 106 

VI. Millions of Hearers 118 

VII. How a University was Founded 132 

VIII. His Splendid Efficiency ........ 148 

IX.* The Story of "Acres of Diamonds" .... 160 

Fifty Years on the Lecture Platform . . . 171 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

RUSSELL H. CONWELL Frontispiece 

The Berkshire School-house Where Conwell 

Taught Facing p. 66 

Present Appearance of the Old Conwell Home " 66 
The Sword that Still Inspires Russell 

Conwell " 66 

Beside the Grave of John Ring " 128 

The Old Meeting-house Near the Conwell 

Home " 128 

Russell Conwell in the Civil War .... " 166 



AN APPRECIATION 

Though Russell H. Conwell's Acres of Dia- 
monds have been spread all over the United States, 
time and care have made them more valuable, 
and now that they have been reset in black and 
white by their discoverer, they are to be laid in the 
hands of a multitude for their enrichment. 

In the same case with these gems there is a 
fascinating story of the Master Jeweler's life-work 
which splendidly illustrates the ultimate unit of 
power by showing what one man can do in one 
day and what one life is worth to the world. ' 

As his neighbor and intimate friend in Phila- 
delphia for thirty years, I am free to say that 
Russell H. Conwell's tall, manly figure stands 
out in the state of Pennsylvania as its first citizen 
and "The Big Brother" of its seven millions of 
people. 

From the beginning of his career he has been a 
credible witness in the Court of Public Works to 
the truth of the strong language of the New 
Testament Parable where it says, "If ye have 
faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto 



this mountain, 'Remove hence to yonder place/ 

AND IT SHALL REMOVE AND NOTHING SHALL BE 
IMPOSSIBLE UNTO YOU." 

As a student, schoolmaster, lawyer, preacher, 
organizer, thinker and writer, lecturer, educator, 
diplomat, and leader of men, he has made his 
mark on his city and state and the times in which 
he has lived. A man dies, but his good work lives. 

His ideas, ideals, and enthusiasms have inspired 
tens of thousands of lives. A book full of the 
energetics of a master workman is just what every 
young man cares for. 



& ffifQ, ft&Uur 





ACRES OF DIAMONDS 



Friends, — This lecture has been delivered under these circumstances: I 
visit a town or city, and try to arrive there early enough to see the postmaster, 
the barber, the keeper of the hotel, the principal of the schools, and the min- 
isters of some of the churches, and then go into some of the factories and 
stores, and talk with the people, and get into sympathy with the local condi- 
tions of that town or city and see what has been their history, what oppor- 
tunities they had, and what they had failed to do — and every town fails to 
do something — and then go to the lecture and talk to those people about the 
subjects which applied to their locality. "Acres of Diamonds" — the idea — 
has continuously been precisely the same. The idea is that in this country 
of ours every man has the opportunity to make more of himself than he does 
in his own environment, with his own skill, with his own energy, and with his 
own friends. 

Russell H. Conwell. 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 



WHEN going down the Tigris and Euphrates 
rivers many years ago with a party of 
English travelers I found myself under the direc- 
tion of an old Arab guide whom we hired up at 
Bagdad, and I have often thought how that guide 
resembled our barbers in certain mental char- 
acteristics. He thought that it was not only his 
duty to guide us down those rivers, and do what he 
was paid for doing, but also to entertain us with 
stories curious and weird, ancient and modern, 
strange and familiar. Many of them I have for- 
gotten, and I am glad I have, but there is one I 
shall never forget. 

The old guide was leading my camel by its 
halter along the banks of those ancient rivers, and 
he told me story after story until I grew weary 



This is the most recent and complete form of the lecture. 
It happened to be delivered in Philadelphia, Dr. Conwell's 
home city. When he says " right here in Philadelphia," he -means 
the home city, town, or village of every reader of this book, just 
as he would use the name of it if delivering the lecture there, 
instead of doing it through the pages which follow. 

3 






ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

of his story-telling and ceased to listen. I have 
never been irritated with that guide when he 
lost his temper as I ceased listening. But I 
remember that he took off his Turkish cap and 
swung it in a circle to get my attention. I could 
see it through the corner of my eye, but I deter- 
mined not to look straight at him for fear he would 
tell another story. But although I am not a 
woman, I did finally look, and as soon as I did he 
went right into another story. 

Said he, "I will tell you a story now which I 
reserve for my particular friends.' ' When he 
emphasized the words "particular friends," I lis- 
tened, and I have ever been glad I did. I really 
feel devoutly thankful, that there are 1,674 young 
men who have been carried through college by 
this lecture who are also glad that I did listen. 
The old guide told me that there once lived not 
far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by 
the name of AH Hafed. He said that AH Hafed 
owned a very large farm, that he had orchards, 
grain-fields, and gardens; that he had money at 
interest, and was a wealthy and contented man. 
He was contented because he was wealthy, and 
wealthy because he was contented. One day 
there visited that old Persian farmer one of those 
ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of 
the East. He sat down by the fire and told the 
old farmer how this world of ours was made. 
He said that this world was once a mere bank of 
fog, and that the Almighty thrust His finger into 

4 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

this bank of fog, and began slowly to move His 
finger around, increasing the speed until at last 
He whirled this bank of fog into a solid ball of 
fire. Then it went rolling through the universe, 
burning its way through other banks, of fog, and 
condensed the moisture without, until it fell in 
floods of rain upon its hot surface, and cooled 
the outward crust. Then the internal fires burst- 
ing outward through the crust threw up the moun- 
tains and hills, the valleys, the plains and prairies 
of this wonderful world of ours. If this internal 
molten mass* came bursting out and cooled very 
quickly it became granite; less quickly copper, 
less quickly silver, less quickly gold, and, after 
gold, diamonds were made. 

Said the old priest, "A diamond is a congea led 
drop of sunlight. " Now that is literally scien- 
tifically true, that a diamond is an actual deposit 
of carbon from the sun. The old priest told AH 
Hafed that if he had one diamond the size of 
his thumb he could purchase the county, and if 
he had a mine of diamonds he could place his 
children upon thrones through the influence of 
their great wealth. 

Ali Hafed heard all about diamonds, how much 
they were worth, and went to his bed that night 
a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he 
was poor because he was discontented, and dis- 
contented because he feared he was poor. He 
said, "I want a mine of diamonds," and he lay 
awake all night. 

5 






ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

Early in the morning he sought out the priest. 
I know by experience that a priest is very cross 
when awakened early in the morning, and when 
he shook that old priest out of his dreams, AH 
Hafed said to him: 

"Will you tell me where I can find diamonds ?" 

"Diamonds! What do you want with dia- 
monds?" "Why, I wish to be immensely rich." 
"Well, then, go along ;. and find them. That is 
all you have to qlo; go and find them, and then 
you have them."/ "But I don't know where to 
go." "Well, if you will find a river that runs 
through white sands, between high mountains, 
in those white sands you will always find dia- 
monds," ("I don't believe there is any such 
river." "Oh yes, there are plenty of them. All 
you have to do is to go and find them, and then 
you have them." Said AH Hafed, "I will go." 

So he sold his farm, collected his money, left 
his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he 
went in search of diamonds. He began his search, 
very properly to my mind, at the Mountains of 
the Moon. Afterward he came around into Pales- 
tine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last 
when his money was all spent and he was in 
rags, wretchedness, and poverty, he stood on the 
shore of that bay at Barcelona, in Spain, when 
a great tidal wave came rolling in between the 
pillars of Hercules, and the poor, afflicted, suffer- 
ing, dying man could not resist the awful tempta- 
tion to cast himself into that incoming tide, and 

6 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise 
in this life again. 

When that old guide had told me that awfully 
sad story he stopped the camel I was riding on 
and went back to fix the baggage that was coming 
off another camel, and I had an opportunity to 
muse over his story while he was gone. I remem- 
ber saying to myself, "Why did he reserve that 
story for his 'particular friends'?" / There seemed 
to be no beginning, no middle, no end, nothing 
to it. ) That was the first story I had ever heard 
told in my life, and would be the first one I ever 
read, in which the hero was killed in the first 
chapter. I had but one chapter of that story, 
and the hero was dead. 

When the guide came back and took up the 
halter of my camel, he went right ahead with the 
story, into the second chapter, just as though 
there had been no break. The man who pur- 
chased AH Hafed's farm one day led his camel 
into the garden to drink, and as that camel put 
its nose into the shallow water of that garden 
brook, Ali Hafed's successor noticed a curious 
flash of light from the white sands of the stream. 
He pulled out a black stone having an eye of light 
reflecting all the hues of the rainbow. He took 
the pebble into the house and put it on the mantel 
which covers the central fires, and forgot all about 
it. 

A few days later this same old priest came in 
to visit Ali Hafed's successor, and the moment 

2 7 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

he opened that drawing-room door he saw that 
flash of light on the mantel, and he rushed up 
to it, and shouted: "Here is a diamond! Has Ali 
Hafed returned ?" "Oh no, Ali Hafed has not re- 
turned, and that is not a diamond. That is noth- 
ing but a stone we found right out here in our 
own garden." "But," said the priest, "I tell you 
I know a diamond when I see it. I know posi- 
tively that is a diamond." 

Then together they rushed out into that old 
garden and stirred up the white sands with their 
fingers, and lo! there came up other more beau- 
tiful and valuable gems than the first. "Thus," 
said the guide to me, and, friends, it is historically 
/ true, "was discovered the diamond-mine of Gol- 
conda, the most magnificent diamond-mine in 
all the history of mankind, excelling the Kimberly 
itself. The Kohinoor, and the Orloff of the crown 
jewels of England and Russia, the largest on earth, 
came from that mine." 

When that old Arab guide told me the second 
chapter of his story, he then took off his Turkish 
cap and swung it around in the air again to get 
my attention to the moral. Those Arab guides 
have morals to their stories, although ■« they are 
not always moral. As he swung his hat, he said 
to me, "Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug 
in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat- 
fields, or in his own garden, instead of wretched- 
ness, starvation, and death by suicide in a strange 
land, he would have had 'acres of diamonds.' 

8 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

For every acre of that old farm, yes, every shov- 
elful, afterward revealed gems which since have 
decorated the crowns of monarchs." 

When he had added the moral to his story I 
saw why^he reserved it for "his particular friends." 
But I did not tell him I could see it. It was that 
mean old Arab's way of going around a thing 
like a lawyer, to say indirectly what he did not 
dare say directly, that "in his private opinion 
there was a certain young man then traveling down 
the Tigris River that might better be at home in 
America." I did not tell him I could see that, 
but I told him his story reminded me of one, and 
I told it to him quick, and I think I will tell it to 
you. 

I told him of a man out in California in 1847, 
who owned a ranch. He heard they had discovered 
gold in southern California, and so with a passion 
for gold he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter, and 
away he went, never to come back. Colonel 
Sutter put a mill upon a stream that ran through 
that ranch, and one day his little girl brought 
some wet sand from the raceway into their home 
and sifted it through her fingers before the fire, 
and in that falling sand a visitor saw the first 
shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered 
in California. The man who had owned that 
ranch wanted gold, and he could have secured it 
for the mere taking. Indeed, thirty-eight millions 
of dollars has been taken out of a very few acres 
since then, About eight years ago I delivered 

9 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

this lecture in a city that stands on that farm, 
and they told me that a one-third owner for years 
and years had been getting one hundred and 
twenty dollars in gold every fifteen minutes, 
sleeping or waking, without taxation. You and 
I would enjoy an income like that — if we didn't 
have to pay an income tax. 

But a better illustration really than that oc- 
curred here in our own Pennsylvania. If there 
is anything I enjoy above another on the plat- 
form, it is to get one of these German audiences 
in Pennsylvania before me, and fire that at them, 
and I enjoy it to-night. There was a man living 
in Pennsylvania, not unlike some Pennsylvanians 
you have seen, who owned a farm, and he did 
with that farm just what I should do with a 
farm if I owned one in Pennsylvania — he sold it. 
But before he sold it he decided to secure employ- 
ment collecting coal-oil for his cousin, who was 
in the business in Canada, where they first dis- 
covered oil on this continent. They dipped it 
from the running streams at that early time. 
So this Pennsylvania farmer wrote to his cousin 
asking for employment. You see, friends, this 
farmer was not altogether a foolish man. No, 
he was not. He did not leave his farm until he 
had something else to do. Of all the simpletons 
the stars shine on I don't know of a worse one than 
the man who leaves one job before he has gotten an- 
other. That has especial reference to my profes- 
sion, and has no reference whatever to a man 

10 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

seeking a divorce. When he wrote to his cousin 
for employment, his cousin replied, "I cannot 
engage you because you know nothing about the 
oil business." 

Well, then the old farmer said, "I will know," 
and with most commendable zeal (characteristic 
of the students of Temple University) he set 
himself at the study of the whole subject. He 
began away back at the second day of God's 
creation when this world was covered thick and 
deep with that rich vegetation which since has 
turned to the primitive beds of coal. He studied 
the subject until he found that the drainings really 
of those rich beds of coal furnished the coal-oil 
that was worth pumping, and then he found how 
it came up with the living springs. He studied 
until he knew what it looked like, smelled like, 
tasted like, and how to refine it. Now said he 
in his letter to his cousin, "I understand the oil 
business." His cousin answered, ''All right, 
come on." 

So he sold his farm, according to the county 
record, for $833 (even money, "no cents"). He 
had scarcely gone from that place before the man 
who purchased the spot went out to arrange for 
the watering of the cattle. He found the previous 
owner had gone out years before and put a plank 
across the brook back of the barn, edgewise into 
the surface of the water just a few inches. The 
purpose of that plank at that sharp angle across 
the brook was to throw over to the other bank a 

11 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle 
would not put their noses. But with that plank 
there to throw it all over to one side, the cattle 
would drink below, and thus that man who had 
gone to Canada had been himself damming back 
for twenty-three years a flood of coal-oil which the 
state geologists of Pennsylvania declared to us 
ten years later was even then worth a hundred 
millions of dollars to our state, and four years ago 
our geologist declared the discovery to be worth 
to our state a thousand millions of dollars. The 
man who owned that territory on which the city 
of Titusville now stands, and those Pleasantville 
valleys, had studied the subject from the second 
day of God's creation clear down to the present 
time. He studied it until he knew all about it, 
and yet he is said to have sold the whole of it 
for $833, and again I say, ''no sense." 

But I need another illustration. I found it in 
Massachusetts, and I am sorry I did because that 
is the state I came from. This young man in 
Massachusetts furnishes just another phase of my 
thought. He went to Yale College and studied 
mines and mining, and became such an adept; as 
a mining engineer that he was employed by the 
authorities of the university to train students who 
were behind their classes. During his senior year 
he earned $15 a week for doing that work. When 
he graduated they raised his pay from $15 to $45 
a week, and offered him a professorship, and as 
soon as they did he went right home to his mother. 

12 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

If they had raised that boy's pay from $15 to $15,60 
he would have stayed and been proud of the place, 
but when they put it up to $45 at one leap, he said, 
11 Mother, I won't work for $45 a week. The idea 
of a man with a brain like mine working for $45 
a week! Let's go out in California and stake out 
gold-mines and silver-mines, and be immensely 
rich." 

Said his mother, "Now, Charlie, it is just as 
well to be happy as it is to be rich." 

"Yes," said Charlie, "but it is just as well to 
be rich and happy, too." And they were both 
right about it. As he was an only son and 
she a widow, of course he had his way. They 
always do. 

They sold out in Massachusetts, and instead 
of going to California they went to Wisconsin, 
where he went into the employ of the Superior 
Copper Mining Company at $15 a week again, 
but with the proviso in his contract that he should 
have an interest in any mines he should discover 
for the company. I don't believe he ever discov- 
ered a mine, and if I am looking in the face of any 
stockholder of that copper company you wish 
he had discovered something or other. I have 
friends who are not here because they could not 
afford a ticket, who did have stock in that com- 
pany at the time this young man was employed 
there. This young man went out there, and I 
have not heard a word from him. I don't know 
what became of him, and I don't know whether 

*3 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

he found any mines or not, but I don't believe 
he ever did. 

But I do know the other end of the line. He 
had scarcely gotten out of the old homestead be- 
fore the succeeding owner went out to dig potatoes. 
The potatoes were already growing in the ground 
when he bought the farm, and as the old farmer 
was bringing in a basket of potatoes it hugged 
very tight between the ends of the stone fence. 
You know in Massachusetts our farms are nearly 
all stone wall. There you are obliged to be very 
economical of front gateways in order to have 
some place to put the stone. When that basket 
hugged so tight he set it down on the ground, 
and then dragged on one side, and pulled on the 
other side, and as he was dragging that basket 
through this farmer noticed in the upper and 
outer corner of that stone wall, right next the 
gate, a block of native silver eight inches square. 
That professor of mines, mining, and mineralogy 
who knew so much about the subject that he 
would not work for $45 a week, when he sold 
that homestead in Massachusetts sat right on 
that silver to make the bargain. He was born 
on that homestead, was brought up there, and 
had gone back and forth rubbing the stone with 
his sleeve until it reflected his countenance, and 
seemed to say, "Here is a hundred thousand 
dollars right down here just for the taking." 
But he would not take it. It was in a home in 
Newburyport, Massachusetts, and there was no 

J4 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

silver there, all away off — well, I don't know where, 
and he did not, but somewhere else, and he was 
a professor of mineralogy. 

My friends, that mistake is very universally 
made, and why should we even smile at him. I 
often wonder what has become of him. I do not 
know at all, but I will tell you what I "guess" 
as a Yankee. I guess that he sits out there by his 
fireside to-night with his friends gathered around 
him, and he is saying to them something like this : 
"Do you know that man Conwell who lives in 
Philadelphia?" "Oh yes, I have heard of him." 
"Do you know that man Jones that lives in 
Philadelphia?" "Yes, I have heard of him, too." 

Then he begins to laugh, and shakes his sides, 
and says to his friends, "Well, they have done 
just the same thing I did, precisely" — and that 
spoils the whole joke, for you and I have done 
the same thing he did, and while we sit here and 
laugh at him he has a better right to sit out there 
and laugh at us. I know I have made the same 
mistakes, but, of course, that does not make any 
difference, because we don't expect the same man 
to preach and practise, too. 

As I come here to-night and look around this 
audience I am seeing again what through these 
fifty years I have continually seen — men that are 
making precisely that same mistake. I often wish 
I could see the younger people, and would that the 
Academy had been filled to-night with our high- 
school scholars and our grammar-school scholars, 

J 5 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

that I could have them to talk to. While I would 
have preferred such an audience as that, because 
they are most susceptible, as they have not grown 
up into their prejudices as we have, they have 
not gotten into any custom that they cannot 
break, they have not met with any failures as 
we have; and while I could perhaps do such an 
audience as that more good than I can do grown- 
up people, yet I will do the best I can with the 
material I have. I say to you that you have 
' 'acres of diamonds" in Philadelphia right where 
you now live. "Oh," but you will say, "you 
cannot know much about your city if you think 
there are any 'acres of diamonds' here." 

I was greatly interested in that account in the 
newspaper of the young man who found that 
diamond in North Carolina. It was one of the 
purest diamonds that has ever been discovered, 
and it has several predecessors near the same 
locality. I went to a distinguished professor in 
mineralogy and asked him where he thought those 
diamonds came from. The professor secured the 
map of the geologic formations of our continent, 
and traced it. He said it went either through the 
underlying carboniferous strata adapted for such 
production, westward through Ohio and the Mis- 
sissippi, or in more probability came eastward 
through Virginia and tip the shore of the Atlantic 
Ocean. It is a fact that the diamonds were there, 
for they have been discovered and sold; and that 
they were carried down there during the drift 

i6 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

period, from some northern locality. Now who 
can say but some person going down with his 
drill in Philadelphia will find some trace of a dia- 
mond-mine yet down here ? Oh, friends ! you can- 
not say that you are not over one of the greatest 
diamond-mines in the world, for such a diamond 
as that only comes from the most profitable mines 
that are found on earth. 

But it serves simply to illustrate my thought, 
which I emphasize by saying if you do not have 
the actual diamond-mines literally you have all 
that they would be good for to you. Because 
now that the Queen of England has given the 
greatest compliment ever conferred upon American 
woman for her attire because she did not appear 
with any jewels at all at the late reception in 
England, it has almost done away with the use 
of diamonds anyhow. All you would care for 
would be the few you would wear if you wish 
to be modest, and the rest you would sell for 
money. 

Now then, I say again that the opportunity 
to get rich, to attain unto great wealth, is here 
in Philadelphia now, within the reach of almost 
every man and woman who hears me speak to- 
night, and I mean just what I say. I have not 
come to this platform even under these circum- 
stances to recite something to you. I have come 
to tell you what in God's sight I believe to be the 
truth, and if the years of life have been of any 
value to me in the attainment of common sense, 

17 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

I know I am right; that the men and women sit- 
ting here, who found it difficult perhaps to buy 
a ticket to this lecture or gathering to-night, have 
within their reach "acres of diamonds," oppor- 
tunities to get largely wealthy. There never was 
a place on earth more adapted than the city of 
Philadelphia to-day, and never in the history of 
the world did a poor man without capital have 
such an opportunity to get rich quickly and 
honestly as he has now in our city. I say it is the 
truth, and I want you to accept it as such; for 
if you think I have come to simply recite some- 
thing, then I would better not be here. I have no 
time to waste in any such talk, but to say the 
things I believe, and unless some of you get 
richer for what I am saying to-night my time is 
wasted. 

I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your 
duty to get rich. How many of my pious brethren 
say to me, "Do you, a Christian minister, spend 
your time going up and down the country advising 
young people to get rich, to get money?" "Yes, 
of course I do." They say, "Isn't that awful! 
Why don't you preach the gospel instead of 
preaching about man's making money?" "Be- 
cause to make money honestly is to preach the 
gospel." That is the reason. The men who get 
rich may be the most honest men you find in the 
community. 

"Oh," but says some young man here to-night, 
"I have been told all my life that if a person has 

18 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and 
mean and contemptible." My friend, that is 
the reason why you have none, because you have 
that idea of people. The foundation of your faith 
is altogether false. Let me say here clearly, and 
say it briefly, though subject to discussion which 
I have not time for here, ninety-eight out of one 
hundred of the rich men of America are honest. 
That is why they are rich. That is why they are 
trusted with money. That is why they carry on 
great enterprises and find plenty of people to 
work with them. It is because they are honest 
men. 

Says another young man, ''I hear sometimes 
of men that get millions of dollars dishonestly." 
Yes, of course you do, and so do I. But they are 
so rare a thing in fact that the newspapers talk 
about them all the time as a matter of news until 
you get the idea that all the other rich men got 
rich dishonestly. 

My friend, you take and drive me — if you fur- 
nish the auto — out into the suburbs of Phila- 
delphia, and introduce me to the people who own 
their homes around this great city, those beautiful 
homes with gardens and flowers, those magnificent 
homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce 
you to the very best people in character as well as 
in enterprise in our city, and you know I will. 
A man is not really a true man until he owns his 
own home, and they that own their homes are 
made more honorable and honest and pure, and 

19 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

true and economical and careful, by owning the 
home. \/ 

For a man to have money, even in large sums, 
is not an inconsistent thing. We preach against 
covetousness, and you know we do, in the pulpit, 
and oftentimes preach against it so long and 
use the terms about "filthy lucre" so extremely 
that Christians get the idea that when we stand 
in the pulpit we believe it is wicked for any man 
to have money — until the collection-basket goes 
around, and then we almost swear at the people 
because they don't give more money. Oh, the 
inconsistency of such doctrines as that! 

Money is power, and you ought to be reason- 
ably ambitious to have it. You ought because you 
can do more good with it than you could without 
it. Money printed your Bible, money builds your 
churches, money sends your missionaries, and 
money pays your preachers, and you would not 
have many of them, either, if you did not pay 
them. I am always willing that my church should 
raise my salary, because the church that pays the 
largest salary always raises it the easiest. You 
never knew an exception to it in your life. The 
man who gets the largest salary can do the most 
good with the power that is furnished to him. 
Of course he can if his spirit be right to use it 
for what it is given to him. *vr 

I say, then, you ought to have money. If 
you can honestly attain unto riches in Philadel- 
phia, it is your Christian and godly duty to do so, 

20 



ACRES OP DIAMONDS 

It is an awful mistake of these pious people to 
think you must be awfully poor in order to be 
pious. 

Some men say, "Don't you sympathize with 
the poor people?" Of course I do, or else I would 
not have been lecturing these years. I won't 
give in but what I sympathize with the poor, but 
the number of poor who are to be sympathized 
with is very small. I /To sympathize with a man 
whom God has punished for his sins, thus to help 
him when God would still continue a just punish- 
ment, is to do wrong, no doubt about it, and we 
do that more than we help those who are deserv- 
ing. While we should sympathize with God's 
poor — that is, those who cannot help themselves — 
let us remember there is not a poor person in the 
United States who was not made poor by his own 
shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of some one 
else. It is all wrong to be poor, anyhow. Let us 
give in to that argument and pass that to one side. 

A gentleman gets up back there, and says, 
"Don't you think there are some things in this 
world that are better than money?" Of course I 
do, but I am talking about money now. Of course 
there are some things higher than money. Oh 
yes, I know by the grave that has left me standing 
alone that there are some things in this world 
that are higher and sweeter and purer than 
money. Well do I know there are some things 
higher and grander than gold. Love is the grand- 
est thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover 

21 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

who has plenty of money. Money is power, 
money is force, money will do good as well as 
harm. In the hands of good men and women it 
could accomplish, and it has accomplished, good. 

I hate to leave that behind me. I heard a 
man get up in a prayer-meeting in our city and 
thank the Lord he was "one of God's poor." 
Well, I wonder what his wife thinks about that? 
She earns all the money that comes into that 
house, and he smokes a part of that on the veranda. 
I don't want to see any more of the Lord's poor 
of that kind, and I don't believe the Lord does. 
And yet there are some people who think in order 
to be pious you must be awfully poor and awfully 
dirty. That does not follow at all. While we 
sympathize with the poor, let us not teach a doc- 
trine like that. 

Yet the age is prejudiced against advising a 
Christian man (or, as a Jew would say, a godly 
man) from attaining unto wealth. The prejudice 
is so universal and the years are far enough back, 
I think, for me to safely mention that years ago 
up at Temple University there was a young man 
in our theological school who thought he was the 
only pious student in that department. He came 
into my office one evening and sat down by my 
desk, and said to me: "Mr. President, I think it 
is my duty sir, to come in and labor with you." 
"What has happened now?" Said he, "I heard 
you say at the Academy, at the Peirce School 
commencement, that you thought it was an hon- 

22 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

orable ambition for a young man to desire to have 
wealth, and that you thought it made him temper- 
ate, made him anxious to have a good name, and 
made him industrious. You spoke about man's 
ambition to have money helping to make him a 
good man. Sir, I have come to tell you the Holy 
Bible says that 'money is the root of all evil.' " 

I told him I had never seen it in the Bible, 
and advised him to go out into the chapel and get 
the Bible, and show me the place. So out he went 
for the Bible, and soon he stalked into my office 
with the Bible open, with all the bigoted pride 
of the narrow sectarian, or of one who founds his 
Christianity on some misinterpretation of Scrip- 
ture. He flung the Bible down on my desk, and 
fairly squealed into my ear: "There it is, Mr. 
President; you can read it for yourself." I said 
to him: "Well, young man, you will learn when 
you get a little older that you cannot trust another 
denomination to read the Bible for you. You be- 
long to another denomination. You are taught in 
the theological school, however, that emphasis is 
exegesis. Now, will you take that Bible and read 
it yourself, and give the proper emphasis to it?" 

He took the Bible, and proudly read, "'The 
love of money is the root of all evil.' " 

Then he had it right, and when one does quote 
aright from that same old Book he quotes the 
absolute truth. I have lived through fifty years 
of the mightiest battle that old Book has ever 
fought, and I have lived to see its banners flying 

3 23 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

free; for never in the history of this world did 
the great minds of earth so universally agree 
that the Bible is true — all true — as they do at 
this very hour. 

So I say that when he quoted right, of course 
he quoted the absolute truth. "The love of 
money is the root of all evil." He who tries to 
attain unto it too quickly, or dishonestly, will 
fall into many snares, no doubt about that. The 
love of money^JWhat is that? It is making an 
idol of money, and idolatry pure and simple every- 
where is condemned by the Holy Scriptures and 
by man's common sense. The man that worships 
the dollar instead of thinking of the purposes for 
which it ought to be used, the man who idolizes 
simply money, the miser that hordes his money 
in the cellar, or hides it in his stocking, or refuses 
to invest it where it will do the world good, that 
man who hugs the dollar until the eagle squeals 
has in him the root of all evil. 

I think I will leave that behind me now and 
answer the question of nearly all of you who are 
asking, "Is there opportunity to get rich in Phila- 
delphia?" Well, now, how simple a thing it is 
to see where it is, and the instant you see where 
it is it is yours. Some old gentleman gets up back 
there and says, "Mr. Conwell, have you lived in 
Philadelphia for thirty-one years and don't know 
that the time has gone by when you can make 
anything in this city?" "No, I don't think it is." 
"Yes, it is; I have tried it." "What business 

24 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

are you in?" "I kept a store here for twenty 
years, and never made over a thousand dollars 
in the whole twenty years." 

"Well, then, you can measure the good you 
have been to this city by what this city has paid 
you, because a man can judge very well what he 
is worth by what he receives; that is, in what he 
is to the world at this time. If you have not made 
over a thousand dollars in twenty years in Phila- 
delphia, it would have been better for Philadelphia 
if they had kicked you out of the city nineteen 
years and nine months ago. A man has no right 
to keep a store in Philadelphia twenty years and 
not make at least five hundred thousand dollars, 
even though it be a corner grocery up-town." 
You say, "You cannot make five thousand dol- 
lars in a store now." Oh, my friends, if you will 
just take only four blocks around you, and find 
out what the people want and what you ought 
to supply and set them down with your pencil, 
and figure up the profits you would make if you 
did supply them, you would very soon see it. 
There is wealth right within the sound of your 
voice. 

Some one says: "You don't know anything 
about business. A preacher never knows a thing 
about business." Well, then, I will have to prove 
that I am an expert. I don't like to do this, but 
I have to do it because my testimony will not be 
taken if I am not an expert. My father kept a 
country store, and if there is any place under the 

25 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

stars where a man gets all sorts of experience in 
every kind of mercantile transactions, it is in the 
country store. I am not proud of my experience, 
but sometimes when my father was away he would 
leave me in charge of the store, though fortunately 
for him that was not very often. But this did 
occur many times, friends: A man would come 
in the store, and say to me, "Do you keep jack- 
knives?" "No, we don't keep jack-knives," and 
I went off whistling a tune. What did I care 
about that man, anyhow? Then another farmer 
would come in and say, "Do you keep jack- 
knives?" "No, we don't keep jack-knives." 
Then I went away and whistled another tune. 
Then a third man came right in the same door and 
said, "Do you keep jack-knives?" "No. Why 
is every one around here asking for jack-knives? 
Do you suppose we are keeping this store to sup- 
ply the whole neighborhood with jack-knives?" 
Do you carry on your store like that in Philadel- 
phia? The difficulty was I had not then learned 
that the foundation of godliness and the founda- 
tion principle of success in business are both the 
same precisely. The man who says, "I cannot 
carry my religion into business" advertises himself 
either as being an imbecile in business, or on the 
road to bankruptcy, or a thief, one of the three, 
sure. He will fail within a very few years. He 
certainly will if he doesn't carry his religion into 
business. If I had been carrying on my father's 
store on a Christian plan, godly plan, I would 

26 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

have had a jack-knife for the third man when 
he called for it. Then I would have actually done 
him a kindness, and I would have received a 
reward myself, which it would have been my 
duty to take. 

There are some over-pious Christian people who 
think if you take any profit on anything you sell 
that you are an unrighteous man. On the con- y 
trary, you would be a criminal to sell goods for 
less than they cost. You have no right to do 
that. You cannot trust a man with your money 
who cannot take care of his own. You cannot 
trust a man in your family that is not true to his * 
own wife. You cannot trust a man in the world 
that does not begin with his own heart, his own 
character, and his own life. It would have been 
my duty to have furnished a jack-knife to the 
third man, or the second, and to have sold it to 
him and actually profited myself. I have no more 
right to sell goods without making a profit on 
them than I have to overcharge him dishonestly 
beyond what they are worth. But I should so 
sell each bill of goods that the person to whom 
I sell shall make as much as I make. 

To live and let live is the principle of the 
gospel, and the principle of every-day common 
sense. Oh, young man, hear me; live as you go 
along. Do not wait until you have reached my 
years before you begin to enjoy anything of this 
life. If I had the millions back, or fifty cents of 
it, which I have tried to earn in these years, it 

27 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

would not do me anything like the good that it 
does me now in this almost sacred presence to- 
night. Oh, yes, I am paid over and over a hun- 
dredfold to-night for dividing as I have tried to 
do in some measure as I went along through the 
years. I ought not speak that way, it sounds ego- 
tistic, but I am old enough now to be excused for 
that. I should have helped my fellow-men, which 
I have tried to do, and every one should try to do, 
and get the happiness of it. The man who goes 
home with the sense that he has stolen a dollar 
that day, that he has robbed a man of what was his 
honest due, is not going to sweet rest. He arises 
tired in the morning, and goes with an unclean 
conscience to his work the next day. He is not a 
successful man at all, although he may have 
laid up millions. But the man who has gone 
through life dividing always with his fellow-men, 
making and demanding his own rights and his 
own profits, and giving to every other man his 
rights and profits, lives every day, and not only 
that, but it is the royal road to great wealth. 
The history of the thousands of millionaires shows 
that to be the case. 

The man over there who said he could not make 
anything in a store in Philadelphia has been car- 
rying on his store on the wrong principle. Sup- 
pose I go into your store to-morrow morning and 
ask, "Do you know neighbor A, who lives one 
square away, at house No. 1240?" "Oh yes, 
I have met him. He deals here at the corner 

28 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

store." "Where did he come from?" "I don't 
know. " ' ' How many does he have in his family ?" 
"I don't know." "What ticket does he vote?" 
"I don't know." "What church does he go to?" 
"I don't know, and don't care. What are you 
asking all these questions for?" 

If you had a store in Philadelphia would you 
answer me like that? If so, then you are con- 
ducting your business just as I carried on my 
father's business in Worthington, Massachusetts. 
You don't know where your neighbor came from 
when he moved to Philadelphia, and you don't 
care. If you had cared you would be a rich man 
now. If you had cared enough about him to take 
an interest in his affairs, to find out what he needed, 
you would have been rich. But you go through 
the world saying, "No opportunity to get rich," 
and there is the fault right at your own door. 

But another young man gets up over there 
and says, "I cannot take up the mercantile busi- 
ness." (While I am talking of trade it applies 
to every occupation.) "Why can't you go into 
the mercantile business?" "Because I haven't 
any capital." Oh, the weak and dudish creature 
that can't see over its collar! It makes a person 
weak to see these little dudes standing around 
the corners and saying, "Oh, if I had plenty of 
capital, how rich I would get." "Young man, 
do you think you are going to get rich on capital?" 
"Certainly." Well, I say, "Certainly not." If 
your mother has plenty of money, and she will 

29 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

set you up in business, you will "set her up in 
business," supplying you with capital. 

The moment a young man or woman gets more 
money than he or she has grown to by practical 
experience, that moment he has gotten a curse. 
It is no help to a young man or woman to inherit 
money. It is no help to your children to leave 
them money, but if you leave them education, 
if you leave them Christian and noble character, 
if you leave them a wide circle of friends, if you 
leave them an honorable name, it is far better 
than that they should have money. It would be 
worse for them, worse for the nation, that they 
should have any money at all. Oh, young man, if 
you have inherited money, don't regard it as a 
help. It will curse you through your years, and 
deprive you of the very best things of human 
life. There is no class of people to be pitied so 
much as the inexperienced sons and daughters of 
the rich of our generation. I pity the rich man's 
son. He can never know the best things in life. 

One of the best things in our life is when a 
young man has earned his own living, and when 
he becomes engaged to some lovely young woman, 
and makes up his mind to have a home of his 
own. Then with that same love comes also that 
divine inspiration toward better things, and he 
begins to save his money. He begins to leave off 
his bad habits and put money in the bank. When 
he has a few hundred dollars he goes out in the 
suburbs to look for a home. He goes to the 

30 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

savings-bank, perhaps, for half of the value, and 
then goes for his wife, and when he takes his bride 
over the threshold of that door for the first time 
he says in words of eloquence my voice can never 
touch: "I have earned this home myself. It 
is all mine, and I divide with thee." That is 
the grandest moment a human heart may ever 
know. 

But a rich man's son can never know . that. 
He takes his bride into a finer mansion, it may be, 
but he is obliged to go all the way through it 
and say to his wife, "My mother gave me that, 
my mother gave me that, and my mother gave 
me this," until his wife wishes she had married 
his mother. I pity the rich man's son. 

The statistics of Massachusetts showed that 
not one rich man's son out of seventeen ever dies 
rich. I pity the rich man's sons unless they have 
the good sense of the elder Vanderbilt, which some- 
times happens. He went to his father and said, 
"Did you earn all your money?" "I did, my son. 
I began to work on a ferry-boat for twenty-five 
cents a day." "Then," said his son, "I will have 
none of your money," and he, too, tried to get 
employment on a ferry-boat that Saturday night. 
He could not get one there, but he did get a place 
for three dollars a week. Of course, if a rich man's 
son will do that, he will get the discipline of a poor 
boy that is worth more than a university education 
to any man. He would then be able to take care 
of the millions of his father. But as a rule the 

3i 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

rich men will not let their sons do the very thing 
that made them great. As a rule, the rich man 
will not allow his son to work — and his mother! 
Why, she would think it was a social disgrace 
if her poor, weak, little lily-fingered, sissy sort of 
a boy had to earn his living with honest toil. I 
have no pity for such rich men's sons. 

I remember one at Niagara Falls. I think 
I remember one a great deal nearer. I think 
there are gentlemen present who werje at a great 
banquet, and I beg pardon of his friends. At a 
banquet here in Philadelphia there sat beside me 
a kind-hearted young man, and he said, "Mr. 
Con well, you have been sick for two or three years. 
When you go out, take my limousine, and it will 
take you up to your house on Broad Street.' ' 
I thanked him very much, and perhaps I ought 
not to mention the incident in this way, but I 
follow the facts. I got on to the seat with the 
driver of that limousine, outside, and when we 
were going up I asked the driver, "How much 
did this limousine cost?" "Six thousand eight 
hundred, and he had to pay the duty on it." 
"Well," I said, "does the owner of this machine 
ever drive it himself?" At that the chauffeur 
laughed so heartily that he lost control of his ma- 
chine. He was so surprised at the question that 
he ran up on the sidewalk, and around a corner 
lamp-post out into the street again. And when he 
got out into the street he laughed till the whole 
machine trembled. He said: "He drive this ma- 

32 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

chine! Oh/; he would be lucky if he knew enough 
to get out when we get there." 

I must tell you about a rich man's son at 
Niagara Falls. I came in from the lecture to the 
hotel, and as I approached the desk of the clerk 
there stood a millionaire's son from New York. 
Fie was an indescribable specimen of anthro- 
pologic potency. He had a skull-cap on one side 
of his head, with a gold tassel in the top of it, and 
a gold-headed cane under his arm with more in 
it than in his head. It is a very difficult thing 
to describe that young man. He wore an eye- 
glass that he could not see through, patent- 
leather boots that he could not walk in, and pants 
that he could not sit down in — dressed like a 
grasshopper. This human cricket came up to the 
clerk's desk just as I entered, adjusted his un- 
seeing eye-glass, and spake in this wise to the clerk. 
You see, he thought it was "Hinglish, you know, " 
to lisp. "Thir, will you have the kindness to 
supply me with thome papah and enwelophs!" 
The hotel clerk measured that man quick, and 
he pulled the envelopes and paper out of a drawer, 
threw them across the counter toward the young 
man, and then turned away to his books. You 
should have seen that young man when those 
envelopes came across that counter. He swelled 
up like a gobbler turkey, adjusted his unseeing eye- 
glass, and yelled: "Come right back here. Now 
thir, will you order a thervant to take that papah 
and enwelophs to yondah dethk." Oh, the poor, 

33 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

miserable, contemptible American monkey! He 
could not carry paper and envelopes twenty feet. 
I suppose he could not get his arms down to do 
it. I have no pity for such travesties upon human 
nature. If you have not capital, young man, I 
am glad of it. What you need is common sense, 
not copper cents. 

The best thing I can do is to illustrate by actual 
facts well-known to you all. A. T. Stewart, a 
poor boy in New York, had $1.50 to begin life on. 
He lost 87^ cents of that on the very first venture. 
How fortunate that young man who loses the 
first time he gambles. That boy said, "I will 
never gamble again in business," and he never 
did. How came he to lose 8 7^2 cents ? You prob- 
ably all know the story how he lost it — because 
he bought some needles, threads, and buttons to 
sell which people did not want, and had them left 
on his hands, a dead loss. Said the boy, "I will 
not lose any more money in that way." Then he 
went around first to the doors and asked the peo- 
ple what they did want. Then when he had found 
out what they wanted he invested his 62^ 
cents to supply a known demand. Study it wher- 
ever you choose — in business, in your profession, 
in your housekeeping, whatever your life, that 
one thing is the secret of success. You must 
first know the demand. You must first know 
what people need, and then invest yourself where 
you are most needed. A. T. Stewart went on 
that principle until he was worth what amounted 

34 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

afterward to forty millions of dollars, owning 
the very store in which Mr. Wanamaker carries 
on his great work in New York. His fortune was 
made by his losing something, which taught him 
the great lesson that he must only invest himself 
or his money in something that people need. 
When will you salesmen learn it? When will 
you manufacturers learn that you must know the 
changing needs of humanity if you would succeed 
in life? Apply yourselves, all you Christian peo- 
ple, as manufacturers or merchants or workmen 
to supply that human need. It is a great principle 
as broad as humanity and as deep as the Scripture 
itself. 

The best illustration I ever heard was of John 
Jacob Astor. You know that he made the money 
of the Astor family when he lived in New York. 
He came across the sea in debt for his fare. But 
that poor boy with nothing in his pocket made the 
fortune of the Astor family on one principle. 
Some young man here to-night will say, "Well, 
they could make those fortunes over in New York, 
but they could not do it in Philadelphia!" My 
friends, did you ever read that wonderful book of 
Riis (his memory is sweet to us because of his 
recent death), wherein is given his statistical 
account of the records taken in 1889 of 107 mill- 
ionaires of New York. If you read the account 
you will see that out of the 107 millionaires only 
seven made their money in New York. Out 
of the 107 millionaires worth ten million dollars 

35 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

in real estate then, 67 of them made their money 
in towns of less than 3,500 inhabitants. The 
richest man in this country to-day, if you read 
the real-estate values, has never moved away from 
a town of 3,500 inhabitants. It makes not so 
much difference where you are as who you are. 
But if you cannot get rich in Philadelphia you 
certainly cannot do it in New York. 

Now John Jacob Astor illustrated what can 
be done anywhere. He had a mortgage once on 
a millinery-store, and they could not sell bonnets 
enough to pay the interest on his money. So 
he foreclosed that mortgage, took possession of 
the store, and went into partnership with the very 
same people, in the same store, with the same 
capital. He did not give them a dollar of capital. 
They had to sell goods to get any money. Then 
he left them alone in the store just as they had 
been before, and he went out and sat down on 
a bench in the park in the shade. What was 
John Jacob Astor doing out there, and in partner- 
ship with people who had failed on his own hands ? 
He had the most important and, to my mind, the 
most pleasant part of that partnership on his 
hands. For as John Jacob Astor sat on that bench 
he was watching the ladies as they went by; 
and where is the man who would not get rich at 
that business? As he sat on the bench if a lady 
passed him with her shoulders back and head 
up, and looked straight to the front, as if she 
did not care if all the world did gaze on her, then 

36 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

he studied her bonnet, and by the time it was 
out of sight he knew the shape of the frame, the 
color of the trimmings, and the crinklings in the 
feather. I sometimes try to describe a bonnet, 
but not always. I would not try to describe a 
modern bonnet. Where is the man that could 
describe one? This aggregation of all sorts of 
driftwood stuck on the back of the head, or the 
side of the neck, like a rooster with only one tail 
feather left. But in John Jacob Astor's day there 
was some art about the millinery business, and 
he went to the millinery-store and said to them: 
"Now put into the show-window just such a 
bonnet as I describe to you, because I have already 
seen a lady who likes such a bonnet. Don't make 
up any more until I come back." Then he went 
out and sat down again, and another lady passed 
him of a different form, of different complexion, 
with a different shape and color of bonnet. ' - Now, ' ' 
said he, "put such a bonnet as that in the show- 
window." He did not fill his show-window up- 
town with a lot of hats and bonnets to drive 
people away, and then sit on the back stairs and 
bawl because people went to Wanamaker's to 
trade. He did not have a hat or a bonnet in that 
show-window but what some lady liked before 
it was made up. The tide of custom began imme- 
diately to turn in, and that has been the founda- 
tion of the greatest store in New York in that line, 
and still exists as one of three stores. Its fortune 
was made by John Jacob Astor after they had 

37 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

failed in business, not by giving them any more 
money, but by finding out what the ladies liked 
for bonnets before they wasted any material in 
making them up. I tell you if a man could fore- 
see the millinery business he could foresee any- 
thing under heaven ! 

Suppose I were to go through this audience 
to-night and ask you in this great manufacturing 
city if there are not opportunities to get rich in 
manufacturing. "Oh yes," some young man says, 
"there are opportunities here still if you build 
with some trust and if you have two or three 
millions of dollars to begin with as capital." 
Young man, the history of the breaking up of the 
trusts by that attack upon "big business" is only 
illustrating what is now the opportunity of the 
smaller man. The time never came in the history 
of the world when you could get rich so quickly 
manufacturing without capital as you can now. 

But you will say, "You cannot do anything 
of the kind. You cannot start without capital." 
Young man, let me illustrate for a moment. I 
must do it. It is my duty to every young man and 
woman, because we are all going into business 
very soon on the same plan. Young man, remem- 
ber if you know what people need you have 
gotten more knowledge of a fortune than any 
amount of capital can give you. 

There was a poor man out of work living in 
Hingham, Massachusetts. He lounged around the 
house until one day his wife told him to get out 

38 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

and work, and, as he lived in Massachusetts, he 
obeyed his wife. He went out and sat down on 
the shore of the bay, and whittled a soaked 
shingle into a wooden chain. His children that 
evening quarreled over it, and he whittled a 
second one to keep peace. While he was whittling 
the second one a neighbor came in and said: 
"Why don't you whittle toys and sell them? You 
could make money at that." "Oh," he said, "I 
would not know what to make." "Why don't 
you ask your own children right here in your 
own house what to make?" "What is the use 
of trying that?" said the carpenter. "M}^ chil- 
dren are different from other people's children." 
(I used to see people like that when I taught 
school.) But he acted upon the hint, and the 
next morning when Mary came down the stair- 
way, he asked, "What do you want for a toy?" 
She began to tell him she would like a doll's bed, 
a doll's washstand, a doll's carriage, a little doll's 
umbrella, and went on with a list of things that 
would take him a lifetime to supply. So, consult- 
ing his own children, in his own house, he took 
the firewood, for he had no money to buy lumber, 
and whittled those strong, unpainted Hingham 
toys that were for so many years known all over 
the world. That man began to make those toys 
for his own children, and then made copies and 
sold them through the boot-and-shoe store next 
door. He began to make a little money, and then 
a little more, and Mr. Lawson, in his Frenzied 
4 39 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

Finance says that man is the richest man in old 
Massachusetts, and I think it is the truth. And 
that man is worth a hundred millions of dollars 
to-day, and has been only thirty-four years mak- 
ing it on that one principle — that one must judge 
that what his own children like at home other 
people's children would like in their homes, too; 
to judge the human heart by oneself, by one's 
wife or by one's children. It is the royal road to 
success in manufacturing. "Oh," but you say, 
"didn't he have any capital?" Yes, a penknife, 
but I don't know that he had paid for that. 

I spoke thus to an audience in New Britain, 
Connecticut, and a lady four seats back went home 
and tried to take off her collar, and the collar- 
button stuck in the buttonhole. She threw it 
out and said, "I am going to get up something 
better than that to put on collars." Her husband 
said: "After what Con well said to-night, you see 
there is a need of an improved collar-fastener that 
is easier to handle. There is a human need ; 
there is a great fortune. Now, then, get up a 
collar-button and get rich." He made fun of her, 
and consequently made fun of me, and that is 
one of the saddest things which comes over me 
like a deep cloud of midnight sometimes — although 
I have worked so hard for more than half a cen- 
tury, yet how little I have ever really done. 
Notwithstanding the greatness and the hand- 
someness of your compliment to-night, I do not 
believe there is one in ten of you that is going to 

40 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

make a million of dollars because you are here 
to-night; but it is not my fault, it is yours. I 
say that sincerely. What is the use of my talking 
if people never do what I advise them to do? 
When her husband ridiculed her, she made up her 
mind she would make a better collar-button, and 
when a woman makes up her mind "she will," 
and does not say anything about it, she does it. 
It was that New England woman who invented 
the snap button which you can find anywhere 
now. It was first a collar-button with a spring 
cap attached to the outer side. Any of you who 
wear modern waterproofs know the button that 
simply pushes together, and when you unbutton 
it you simply pull it apart. That is the button 
to which I refer, and which she invented. She 
afterward invented several other buttons, and 
then invested in more, and then was taken into 
partnership with great factories. Now that woman 
goes over the sea every summer in her private 
steamship — yes, and takes her husband with her! 
If her husband were to die, she would have money 
enough left now to buy a foreign duke or count 
or some such title as that at the latest quotations. 

Now what is my lesson in that incident? It 
is this: I told her then, though I did not know 
her, what I now say to you, "Your wealth is too 
near to you. You are looking right over it"; 
and she had to look over it because it was right 
under her chin. 

I have read in the newspaper that a woman 
41 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

never invented anything. Well, that newspaper 
ought to begin again. Of course, I do not refer 
to gossip — I refer to machines — and if I did I 
might better include the men. That newspaper 
could never appear if women had not invented 
something. Friends, think. Ye women, think! 
You say you cannot make a fortune because you 
are in some laundry, or running a sewing-machine, 
it may be, or walking before some loom, and yet 
you can be a millionaire if you will but follow 
this almost infallible direction. 

When you say a woman doesn't invent anything, 
I ask, Who invented the Jacquard loom that wove 
every stitch you wear? Mrs. Jacquard. The 
printer's roller, the printing-press, were invented 
by farmers' wives. Who invented the cotton-gin 
of the South that enriched our country so amaz- 
ingly? Mrs. General Greene invented the cotton- 
gin and showed the idea to Mr. Whitney, and he, 
like a man, seized it. Who was it that invented 
the sewing-machine? If I would go to school to- 
morrow and ask your children they would say, 
"EliasHowe." 

He was in the Civil War with me, and often in 
my tent, and I often heard him say that he worked 
fourteen years to get up that sewing-machine. 
But his wife made up her mind one day that they 
would starve to death if there wasn't something 
or other invented pretty soon, and so in two hours 
she invented the sewing-machine. Of course he 
took out the patent in his name. Men always do 

42 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

that. Who was it that invented the mower and 
the reaper? According to Mr. McCormick's con- 
fidential communication, so recently published, it 
was a West Virginia woman, who, after his father 
and he had failed altogether in making a reaper 
and gave it up, took a lot of shears and nailed 
them together on the edge of a board, with one 
shaft of each pair loose, and then wired them so 
that when she pulled the wire one way it closed 
them, and when she pulled the wire the other 
way it opened them, and there she had the princi- 
ple of the mowing-machine. If you look at a 
mowing-machine, you will see it is nothing but 
a lot of shears. If a woman can invent a mowing- 
machine, if a woman can invent a Jacquard loom, 
if a woman can invent a cotton-gin, if a woman can 
invent a trolley switch — as she did and made the 
trolleys possible; if a woman can invent, as Mr. 
Carnegie said, the great iron squeezers that laid 
the foundation of all the steel millions of the 
United States, "we men" can invent anything 
under the stars ! I say that for the encouragement 
of the men. 

Who are the great inventors of the world? 
Again this lesson comes before us. The great 
inventor sits next to you, or you are the person 
yourself. "Oh," but you will say, "I have never 
invented anything in my life." Neither did the 
great inventors until they discovered one great 
secret. Do you think it is a man with a head like a 
bushel measure or a man like a stroke of lightning ? 

43 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

It is neither. The really great man is a plain, 
straightforward, every-day, common-sense man. 
You would not dream that he was a great inventor 
if you did not see something he had actually done. 
His neighbors do not regard him so great. You 
never see anything great over your back fence. 
You say there is no greatness among your neigh- 
bors. It is all away off somewhere else. Their 
greatness is ever so simple, so plain, so earnest, 
so practical, that the neighbors and friends never 
recognize it. 

True greatness is often unrecognized. That is 
sure. You do not know anything about the 
greatest men and women. I went out to write 
the life of General Garfield, and a neighbor, know- 
ing I was in a hurry, and as there was a great 
crowd around the front door, took me around to 
General Garfield's back door and shouted, "Jim! 
Jim!" And very soon "Jim" came to the door 
and let me in, and I wrote the biography of one 
of the grandest men of the nation, and yet he 
was just the same old "Jim" to his neighbor. 
If you know a great man in Philadelphia and you 
should meet him to-morrow, you would say, 
"How are you, Sam?" or "Good morning, Jim." 
Of course you would. That is just what you would 
do. 

One of my soldiers in the Civil War had been 
sentenced to death, and I went up to the White 
House in Washington — sent there for the first 
time in my life — to see the President. I went 

44 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

into the waiting-room and sat down with a lot 
of others on the benches, and the secretary asked 
one after another to tell him what they wanted. 
After the secretary had been through the line, 
he went in, and then came back to the door and 
motioned for me. I went up to that anteroom, 
and the secretary said: "That is the President's 
door right over there. Just rap on it and go 
right in." I never was so taken aback, friends, 
in all my life, never. The secretary himself made 
it worse for me, because he had told me how to 
go in and then went out another door to the 
left and shut that. There I was, in the hallway 
by myself before the President of the United 
States of America's door. I had been on fields of 
battle, where the shells did sometimes shriek and 
the bullets did sometimes hit me, but I always 
wanted to run. I have no sympathy with the 
old man who says, "I would just as soon march 
up to the cannon's mouth as eat my dinner." 
I have no faith in a man who doesn't know enough 
to be afraid when he is being shot at. I never 
was so afraid when the shells came around us 
at Antietam as I was when I went into that room 
that day; but I finally mustered the courage — 
I don't know how I ever did — and at arm's- 
length tapped on the door. The man inside did 
not help me at all, but yelled out, "Come in and 
sit down!" 

Well, I went in and sat down on the edge of a 
chair, and wished I were in Europe, and the man 

45 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

at the table did not look up. He was one of the 
world's greatest men, and was made great by one 
single rule. Oh, that all the young people of 
Philadelphia were before me now and I could say 
just this one thing, and that they would remember 
it. I would give a lifetime for the effect it would 
have on our city and on civilization. Abraham 
Lincoln's principle for greatness can be adopted 
by nearly all. This was his rule: Whatsoever he 
had to do at all, he put his whole mind into it and 
held it all there until that was all done. That 
makes men great almost anywhere. He stuck to 
those papers at that table and did not look up 
at me, and I sat there trembling. Finally, when 
he had put the string around his papers, he pushed 
them over to one side and looked over to me, and 
a smile came over his worn face. He said: "I 
am a very busy man and have only a few minutes 
to spare. Now tell me in the fewest words what it 
is you want." I began to tell him, and mentioned 
the case, and he said: "I have heard all about 
it and you do not need to say any more. Mr. 
Stanton was talking to me only a few days ago 
about that. You can go to the hotel and rest 
assured that the President never did sign an order 
to shoot a boy under twenty years of age, and 
never will. You can say that to his mother any- 
how." 

Then he said to me, "How is it going in the 
field?" I said, "We sometimes get discouraged." 
And he said: "It is all right. We are going to 

46 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

win out now. We are getting very near the' light. 
No man ought to wish to be President of the 
United States, and I will be glad when I get 
through ; then Tad and I are going out to Spring- 
field, Illinois. I have bought a farm out there 
and I don't care if I again earn only twenty -rive 
cents a day. Tad has a mule team, and we are 
going to plant onions." 

Then he asked me, "Were you brought up on a 
farm?" I said, "Yes; in the Berkshire Hills of 
Massachusetts." He then threw his leg over the 
corner of the big chair and said, "I have heard 
many a time, ever since I was young, that up 
there in those hills you have to sharpen the noses 
of the sheep in order to get down to the grass 
between the rocks." He was so familiar, so every- 
day, so farmer-like, that I felt right at home with 
him at once. 

He then took hold of another roll of paper, and 
looked up at me and said, "Good morning." I 
took the hint then and got up and went out. 
After I had gotten out I could not realize I had 
seen the President of the United States at all. 
But a few days later, when still in the city, I saw 
the crowd pass through the East Room by the 
coffin of Abraham Lincoln, and when I looked 
at the upturned face of the murdered President 
I felt then that the man I had seen such a short 
time before, who, so simple a man, so plain a 
man, was one of the greatest men that God ever 
raised up to lead a nation on to ultimate liberty. 

47 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

Yet he was only "Old Abe" to his neighbors. 
When they had the second funeral, I was invited 
among others, and went out to see that same 
coffin put back in the tomb at Springfield. Around 
the tomb stood Lincoln's old neighbors, to whom 
he was just "Old Abe." Of course that is all they 
would say. 

Did you ever see a man who struts around 
altogether too large to notice an ordinary working 
mechanic? Do you think he is great? He is 
nothing but a puffed-up balloon, held down by 
his big feet. There is no greatness there. 

Who are the great men and women? My 
attention was called the other day to the history 
of a very little thing that made the fortune of a 
very poor man. It was an awful thing, and yet 
because of that experience he — not a great invent- 
or or genius — invented the pin that now is called 
the safety-pin, and out of that safety-pin made 
the fortune of one of the great aristocratic families 
of this nation. 

A poor man in Massachusetts who had worked 
in the nail- works was injured at thirty-eight, and 
he could earn but little money. He was emplo}^ 
in the office to rub out the marks on the bills 
made by pencil memorandums, and he used a 
rubber until his hand grew tired. He then tied a 
piece of rubber on the end of a stick and worked 
it like a plane. His little girl came and said, 
"Why, you have a patent, haven't you?" The 
father said afterward, "My daughter told me 

48 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

when I took that stick and put the rubber on 
the end that there was a patent, and that was the 
first thought of that." He went to Boston and 
applied for his patent, and every one of you that 
has a rubber-tipped pencil in your pocket is now 
paying tribute to the millionaire. No capital, 
not a penny did he invest in it. All was income, 
all the way up into the millions. 

But let me hasten to one other greater thought. 
"Show me the great men and women who live 
in Philadelphia." A gentleman over there will 
get up and say: "We don't have any great men 
in Philadelphia. They don't live here. They live 
away off in Rome or St. Petersburg or London or 
Manayunk, or anywhere else but here in our 
town." I have come now to the apex of my 
thought. I have come now to the heart of the 
whole matter and to the center of my strug- 
gle: Why isn't Philadelphia a greater city in its 
greater wealth? Why does New York excel Phila- 
delphia? People say, "Because of her harbor." 
Why do many other cities of the United States 
get ahead of Philadelphia now? There is only 
one answer, and that is because our own people 
talk down their own city. If there ever was a 
community on earth that has to be forced ahead, 
it is the city of Philadelphia. If we are to have a 
boulevard, talk it down; if we are going to have 
better schools, talk them down; if you wish to 
have wise legislation, talk it down; talk all the 
proposed improvements down. That is the only 

49 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

great wrong that I can lay at the feet of the mag- 
nificent Philadelphia that has been so universally 
kind to me. I say it is time we turn around in our 
city and begin to talk up the things that are in 
our city, and begin to set them before the world 
as the people of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, 
and San Francisco do. Oh, if we only could get 
that spirit out among our people, that we can do 
things in Philadelphia and do them well ! 

Arise, ye millions of Philadelphians, trust in 
God and man, and believe in the great oppor- 
tunities that are right here — not over in New York 
or Boston, but here — for business, for everything 
that is worth living for on earth. There was 
never ah opportunity greater. Let us talk up 
our own city. 

But there are two other young men here to- 
night, and that is all I will venture to say, because 
it is too late. One over there gets up and says, 
" There is going to be a great man in Philadelphia, 
but never was one." "Oh, is that so? When are 
you going to be great?" "When I am elected to 
some political office." Young man, won't you 
learn a lesson in the primer of politics that it is 
a prima facie evidence of littleness to hold office 
under our form of government? Great men get 
into office sometimes, but what this country needs 
is men that will do what we tell them to do. 
This nation — where the people rule — is governed 
by the people, for the people, and so long as it is, 
then the office-holder is but the servant of the 

50 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

people, and the Bible says the servant cannot be 
greater than the master. The Bible says, "He 
that is sent cannot be greater than Him who sent 
Him." The people rule, or should rule, and if 
they do, we do not need the greater men in office. 
If the great men in America took our offices, we 
would change to an empire in the next ten years. 

I know of a great many young women, now 
that woman's suffrage is coming, who say, "I 
am going to be President of the United States 
some day." I believe in woman's suffrage, and 
there is no doubt but what it is coming, and I 
am getting out of the way, anyhow. I may want 
an office by and by myself; but if the ambition 
for an office influences the women in their desire 
to vote, I want to say right here what I say to the 
young men, that if you only get the privilege of 
casting one vote, you don't get anything that is 
worth while. Unless you can control more than 
one vote, you will be unknown, and your influence 
so dissipated as practically not to be felt. This 
country is not run by votes. Do you think it is? 
It is governed by influence. It is governed by 
the ambitions and the enterprises which control 
votes. The young woman that thinks she is going 
to vote for the sake of holding an office is making 
an awful blunder. 

That other young man gets up and says, "There 
are going to be great men in this country and in 
Philadelphia." "Is that so? When?" "When 
there comes a great war, when we get into difficulty 

Si 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

through watchful waiting in Mexico; when we 
get into war with England over some frivolous 
deed, or with Japan or China or New Jersey or 
some distant country. Then I will march up to 
the cannon's mouth; I will sweep up among the 
glistening bayonets ; I will leap into the arena and 
tear down the flag and bear it away in triumph. 
I will come home with stars on my shoulder, and 
hold every office in the gift of the nation, and I 
will be great." No, you won't. You think you 
are going to be made great by an office, but 
remember that if you are not great before you 
get the office, you won't be great when you secure 
it. It will only be a burlesque in that shape. 

We had a Peace Jubilee here after the Spanish 
War. Out West they don't believe this, because 
they said, "Philadelphia would not have heard 
of any Spanish War until fifty years hence." 
Some of you saw the procession go up Broad 
Street. I was away, but the family wrote to me 
that the tally-ho coach with 'Lieutenant Hobson 
upon it stopped right at the front door and the 
people shouted, "Hurrah for Hobson!" and if I 
had been there I would have yelled too, because 
he deserves much more of his country than he 
has ever received. But suppose I go into school 
and say, "Who sunk the Merrimac at Santiago?" 
and if the boys answer me, "Hobson," they will 
tell me seven-eighths of a lie. There were seven 
other heroes on that steamer, and they, by virtue 
of their position, were continually exposed to the 

53 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

Spanish fire, while Hobson, as an officer, might 
reasonably be behind the smoke-stack. You have 
gathered in this house your most intelligent people, 
and yet, perhaps, not one here can name the other 
seven men. 

We ought not to so teach history. We ought to 
teach that, however humble a man's station may 
be, if he does his full duty in that place he is 
just as much entitled to the American people's 
honor as is the king upon his throne. But we do 
not so teach. We are now teaching everywhere 
that the generals do all the fighting. 

I remember that, after the war, I went down 
to see General Robert E. Lee, that magnificent 
Christian gentleman of whom both North and 
South are now proud as one of our great Americans. 
The general told me about his servant, "Rastus," 
who was an enlisted colored soldier. He called 
him in one day to make fun of him, and said, 
"Rastus, I hear that all the rest of your company 
are killed, and why are you not killed?" Rastus 
winked at him and said, ' "Cause when there is 
any fightin' goin* on I stay back with the gener- 
als." 

I remember another illustration. I would leave 
it out but for the fact that when you go to the 
library to read this lecture, you will find this has 
been printed in it for twenty-five years. I shut 
my eyes — shut them close — and lo ! I see the faces 
of my youth. Yes, they sometimes say to me, 
"Your hair is not white; you are working night 

S3 " 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

and day without seeming ever to stop; you can't 
be old." But when I shut my eyes, like any other 
man of my years, oh, then come trooping back 
the faces of the loved and lost of long ago, and 
I know, whatever men may say, it is evening-time. 

I shut my eyes now and look back to my native 
town in Massachusetts, and I see the cattle-show 
ground on the mountain-top; I can see the horse- 
sheds there. I can see the Congregational church; 
see the town hall and mountaineers' cottages; 
see a great assembly of people turning out, dressed 
resplendently, and I can see flags flying and hand- 
kerchiefs waving and hear bands playing. I can 
see that company of soldiers that had re-enlisted 
marching up on that cattle-show ground. I was 
but a boy, but I was captain of that company 
and puffed out with pride. A cambric needle 
would have burst me all to pieces. Then I thought 
it was the greatest event that ever came to man 
on earth. If you have ever thought you would 
like to be a king or queen, you go and be received 
by the mayor. 

The bands played, and all the people turned 
out to receive us. I marched up that Common 
so proud at the head of my troops, and we turned 
down into the town hall. Then they seated my 
soldiers down the center aisle and I sat down on 
the front seat. A great assembly of people — a 
hundred or two — came in to fill the town hall, 
so that they stood up all around. Then the town 
officers came in and formed a half-circle. The 

54 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

mayor of the town sat in the middle of the plat- 
form. He was a man who had never held office 
before; but he was a good man, and his friends 
have told me that I might use this without giving 
them offense. He was a good man, but he thought 
an office made a man great. He came up and took 
his seat, adjusted his powerful spectacles, and 
looked around, when he suddenly spied me sitting 
there on the front seat. He came right forward 
on the platform and invited me up to sit with the 
town officers. No town officer ever took any no- 
tice of me before I went to war, except to advise 
the teacher to thrash me, and now I was invited 
up on the stand with the town officers. Oh my! 
the town mayor was then the emperor, the king 
of our day and our time. As I came up on the 
platform they gave me a chair about this far, I 
would say, from the front. 

When I had got seated, the chairman of 
the Selectmen arose and came forward to the 
table, and we all supposed he would introduce 
the Congregational minister, who was the only ora- 
tor in town, and that he would give the oration 
to the returning soldiers. But, friends, you should 
have seen the surprise which ran over the audi- 
ence when they discovered that the old fellow 
was going to deliver that speech himself. He had 
never made a speech in his life, but he fell into 
the same error that hundreds of other men have 
fallen into. It seems so strange that a man won't 
learn he must speak his piece as a boy if he in- 

5 55 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

tends to be an orator when he is grown, but he 
seems to think all he has to do is to hold an office 
to be a great orator. 

So he came up to the front, and brought with 
him a speech which he had learned by heart 
walking up and down the pasture, where he had 
frightened the cattle. He brought the manuscript 
with him and spread it out on the table so as to 
be sure he might see it. He adjusted his spectacles 
and leaned over it for a moment and marched 
back on that platform, and then came forward 
like this — tramp, tramp, tramp. He must have 
studied the subject a great deal, when you come 
to think of it, because he assumed an "elocu- 
tionary" attitude. He rested heavily upon his 
left heel, threw back his shoulders, slightly ad- 
vanced the right foot, opened the organs of speech, 
and advanced his right foot at an angle of forty- 
five. As he stood in that elocutionary attitude, 
friends, this is just the way that speech went. 
Some people say to me, "Don't you exaggerate?" 
That would be impossible. But I am here for 
the lesson and not for the story, and this is the 
way it went: 

"Fellow-citizens — ■" As soon as he heard his 
voice his fingers began to go like that, his knees 
began to shake, and then he trembled all over. 
He choked and swallowed and came around to 
the table to look at the manuscript. Then he 
gathered himself up with clenched fists and came 
back: "Fellow-citizens, we are^- Fellow-citizens, 

56 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

we are — we are — we are — we are — we are — we are 
very happy — we are very happy — we are very 
happy. We are very happy to welcome back to 
their native town these soldiers who have fought 
and bled — and come back again to their native 
town. We are especially — we are especially— we 
are especially. We are especially pleased to see 
with us to-day this young hero" (that meant 
me) — "this young hero who in imagination" 
(friends, remember he said that; if he had not 
said "in imagination" I would not be egotistic 
enough to refer to it at all) — "this young hero 
who in imagination we have seen leading — we 
have seen leading-— leading. We have seen lead- 
ing his troops on to the deadly breach. We have 
seen his shining — we have seen his shining — his 
shining — his shining sword — flashing. Flashing in 
the sunlight, as he shouted to his troops, 'Come 
on'!" 

Oh dear, dear, dear! how little that good man 
knew about war. If he had known anything 
about war at all he ought to have known what 
any of my G. A. R. comrades here to-night will 
tell you is true, that it is next to a crime for an 
officer of infantry ever in time of danger to go 
ahead of his men. "I, with my shining sword 
flashing in the sunlight, shouting to my troops, 
'Come on'!" I never did it. Do you suppose 
I would get in front of my men to be shot in front 
by the enemy and in the back by my own men? 
That is no place for an officer. The place for the 

$7 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

officer in actual battle is behind the line. How 
often, as a staff officer, I rode down the line, when 
our men were suddenly called to the line of battle, 
and the Rebel yells were coming out of the woods, 
and shouted: " Officers to the rear! Officers to 
the rear!" Then every officer gets behind the line 
of private soldiers, and the higher the officer's 
rank the farther behind he goes. Not because 
he is any the less brave, but because the laws of 
war require that. And yet he shouted, "I, with 
my shining sword — " In that house there sat 
the company of my soldiers who had carried that 
boy across the Carolina rivers that he might not 
wet his feet. Some of them had gone far out to 
get a pig or a chicken. Some of them had gone 
to death under the shell-swept pines in the moun- 
tains of Tennessee, yet in the good man's speech 
they were scarcely known. He did refer to them, 
but only incidentally. The hero of the hour was 
this boy. Did the nation owe him anything? 
No, nothing then and nothing now. Why was he 
the hero ? Simply because that man fell into that 
same human error — that this boy was great be- 
cause he was an officer and these were only private 
soldiers. 

Oh, I learned the lesson then that I will never 
forget so long as the tongue of the bell of time 
continues to swing for me. Greatness consists 
not in the holding of some future office, but really 
consists in doing great deeds with little means 
and the accomplishment of vast purposes from 

58 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

the private ranks of life. To be great at all one 
must be great here, now, in Philadelphia. He 
who can give to this city better streets and better 
sidewalks, better schools and more colleges, more 
happiness and more civilization, more of God, he 
will be great anywhere. Let every man or woman 
here, if you never hear me again, remember this, 
that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin 
where you are and what you are, in Philadelphia, 
now. He that can give to his city any blessing, he 
who can be a good citizen while he lives here, he 
that can make better homes, he that can be a 
blessing whether he works in the shop or sits be- 
hind the counter or keeps house, whatever be his 
life, he who would be great anywhere must first 
be great in his own Philadelphia. 



HIS LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS 



BY 

Robert Shackleton 



THE STORY OP THE SWORD 

I SHALL write of a remarkable man, an inter- 
esting man, a man of power, of initiative, of 
will, of persistence; a man who plans vastly and 
who realizes his plans; a man who not only does 
things himself, but who, even more important than 
that, is the constant inspiration of others. I shall 
write of Russell H. Conwell. 

As a farmer's boy he was the leader of the boys 
of the rocky region that was his home ; as a school- 
teacher he won devotion; as a newspaper corre- 
spondent he gained fame ; as a soldier in the Civil 
War he rose to important rank; as a lawyer he 
developed a large practice ; as an author he wrote 
books that reached a mighty total of sales. He 
left the law for the ministry and is the active head 
of a great church that he raised from nothingness. 
He is the most popular lecturer in the world and 
yearly speaks to many thousands. He is, so to 
speak, the discoverer of ''Acres of Diamonds," 
through which thousands of men and women have 
achieved success out of failure. He is the head 

63 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

of two hospitals, one of them founded by himself, 
that have cared for a host of patients, both the 
poor and the rich, irrespective of race or creed. 
He is the founder and head of a university that 
has already had tens of thousands of students. 
His home is in Philadelphia; but he is known in 
every corner of every state in the Union, and 
everywhere he has hosts of friends. All of his life 
he has helped and inspired others. 

Quite by chance, and only yesterday, literally 
yesterday and by chance, and with no thought at 
the moment of Conwell although he had been 
much in my mind for some time past, I picked up 
a thin little book of description by William Dean 
Howells, and, turning the pages of a chapter on 
Lexington, old Lexington of the Revolution, 
written, so Howells had set down, in 1882, I 
noticed, after he had written of the town itself, 
and of the long-past fight there, and of the present- 
day aspect, that he mentioned the church life 
of the place and remarked on the striking ad- 
vances made by the Baptists, wh<5 had lately, as 
he expressed it, been reconstituted out of very 
perishing fragments and made strong and flourish- 
ing, under the ministrations of a lay preacher, 
formerly a colonel in the Union army. And it 
was only a few days before I chanced upon this 
description that Dr. Conwell, the former colonel 
and former lay preacher, had told me of his ex- 
periences in that little old Revolutionary town. 

Howells went on to say that, so he was told, 
64 



STORY OF THE SWORD 

the colonel's success was principally due to his 
making the church attractive to young people. 
Ho wells says no more of him; apparently he did 
not go to hear him; and one wonders if he has 
ever associated that lay preacher of Lexington 
■ with the famous Russell H. Conwell of these recent 
years ! 

"Attractive to young people.' ' Yes, one can 
recognize that to-day, just as it was recognized 
in Lexington. And it may be added that he at 
the same time attracts older people, too ! In this, 
indeed, lies his power. He makes his church in- 
teresting, his sermons interesting, his lectures in- 
teresting. He is himself interesting! Because of 
his being interesting, he gains attention. The at- 
tention gained, he inspires. 

Biography is more than dates. Dates, after all, 
are but mile-stones along the road of life. And 
the most important fact of Conwell 's life is that 
he is still alive — alive and vigorous and earnest, 
and working sixteen hours every day for the good 
of his fellow-men. Yet he is over seventy. For 
he was born on February 15, 1843 — Dorn of poor 
parents, in a low-roofed cottage in the eastern 
Berkshires, in Massachusetts. 

"I was born in this room," he said to me, 
simply, as we sat together recently in front of the 
old fireplace in the principal room of the little 
cottage; for he has bought back the rocky farm 
of his father, and has retained and restored the 
little old home. "I was born in this room. It 

65 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

was bedroom and kitchen. It was poverty." And 
his voice sank with a kind of grimness into silence. 

Then he spoke a little of the struggles of those 
long-past years; and we went out on the porch, 
as the evening shadows fell, and looked out over 
the valley and stream and hills of his youth, and 
he told of his grandmother, and of a young Mary- 
lander who had come to the region on a visit; 
it was a tale of the impetuous love of those two, 
of rash marriage, of the interference of parents, 
of the fierce rivalry of another suitor, of an attack 
on the Marylander's life, of passionate hastiness, 
of unforgivable words, of separation, of lifelong 
sorrow. "Why does grandmother cry so often?" 
he remembers asking when he was a little boy. 
And he was told that it was for the husband of 
her youth. 

We went back into the little house, and he 
showed me the room in which he first saw John 
Brown. "I came down early one morning, and 
saw a huge, hairy man sprawled upon the bed 
there — and I was frightened," he says. 

But John Brown did not long frighten him! 
For he was much at their house after that, and was 
so friendly with Russell and his brother that there 
was no chance for awe; and it gives a curious side- 
light on the character of the stern abolitionist 
that he actually, with infinite patience, taught the 
old horse of the Conwells to go home alone with 
the wagon after leaving the boys at school, a mile 
or more away, and at school-closing time to trot 

66 



THE 

BERK5HIRF 

SCHOOL -HOUSE 

WHERE 

CONWELL 

TAUGHT 








*? - 






-..■_. - 


■-£&§■•-..*> _A_Jk 


* • # ft & 


W x\\ 



THE SWORD THAT STILL INSPIRES RUSSELL COXWELL 



STORY OF THE SWORD 

gently off for them without a driver when merely- 
faced in that direction and told to go! Conwell 
remembers how John Brown, in training it, used 
patiently to walk beside the horse, and control 
its going and its turnings, until it was quite ready 
to go and turn entirely by itself. 

The Conwell house was a station on the Un- 
derground Railway, and Russell Conwell remem- 
bers, when a lad, seeing the escaping slaves that 
his father had driven across country and tempo- 
rarily hidden. ' ' Those were heroic days, ' ' he says, 
quietly. "And once in a while my father let me 
go with him. They were wonderful night drives — 
the cowering slaves, the darkness of the road, 
the caution and the silence and dread of it all." 
This underground route, he remembers, was from 
Philadelphia to New Haven, thence to Spring- 
field, where Conwell's father would take his charge, 
and onward to Bellows Falls and Canada. 

Conwell tells, too, of meeting Frederick Doug- 
lass, the colored orator, in that little cottage in 
the hills. * ' ' I never saw my father, ' Douglass said 
one day — his father was a white man — 'and I 
remember little of my mother except that once 
she tried to keep an overseer from whipping me, 
and the lash cut across her own face, and her 
blood fell over me.' 

"When John Brown was captured," Conwell 
went on, "my father tried to sell this place to 
get a little money to send to help his defense. 
But he couldn't sell it, and on the day of the execu- 

67 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

tion we knelt solemnly here, from eleven to twelve, 
just praying, praying in silence for the passing 
soul of John Brown. And as we prayed we knew 
that others were also praying, for a church-bell 
tolled during that entire hour, and its awesome 
boom went sadly sounding over these hills." 

Con well believes that his real life dates from a 
happening of the time of the Civil War — a hap- 
pening that still looms vivid and intense before 
him, and which undoubtedly did deepen and 
strengthen his strong and deep nature. Yet the 
real Conwell was always essentially the same. 
Neighborhood tradition still tells of his bravery 
as a boy and a youth, of his reckless coasting, his 
skill as a swimmer and his saving of lives, his 
strength and endurance, his plunging out into the 
darkness of a wild winter night to save a neigh- 
bor's cattle. His soldiers came home with tales 
of his devotion to them, and of how he shared 
his rations and his blankets and bravely risked his 
life; of how he crept off into a swamp, at immi- 
nent peril, to rescue one of his men lost or mired 
there. The present Conwell was always Conwell; 
in fact, he may be traced through his ancestry, too, 
for in him are the sturdy virtues, the bravery, the 
grim determination, the practicality, of his father; 
and romanticism, that comes from his grand- 
mother; and the dreamy qualities of his mother, 
who, practical and hardworking New England 
woman that she was, was at the same time influ- 
enced by an almost startling mysticism, 

68 



STORY OF THE SWORD 

And Conwell himself is a dreamer: first of ail 
he is a dreamer; it is the most important fact 
in regard to him! It is because he is a dreamer 
and visualizes his dreams that he can plan the 
great things that to other men would seem im- 
possibilities; and then his intensely practical 
side — his intense efficiency, his power, his skill, 
his patience, his fine earnestness, his mastery 
over others, develop his dreams into realities. 
He dreams dreams and sees visions — but his 
visions are never visionary and his dreams be- 
come facts. 

The rocky hills which meant a dogged struggle 
for very existence, the fugitive slaves, John Brown 
— what a school for youth ! And the literal school 
was a tiny one-room school-house where young 
Conwell came under the care of a teacher who 
realized the boy's unusual capabilities and was 
able to give him broad and unusual help. Then 
a wise country preacher also recognized the 
unusual, and urged the parents to give still more 
education, whereupon supreme effort was made 
and young Russell was sent to Wilbraham Acad- 
emy. He likes to tell of his life there, and of the 
hardships, of which he makes light; and of the 
joy with which week-end pies and cakes were 
received from home ! 

He tells of how he went out on the roads selling 
books from house to house, and of how eagerly 
he devoured the contents of the sample books that 
he carried. "They were a foundation of learning 

69 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

for me," he says, soberly. "And they gave me a 
broad idea of the world." 

¥He went to Yale in i860, but the outbreak of 
the war interfered with college, and he enlisted in 
1 86 1. But he was only eighteen, and his father 
objected, and he went back to Yale. But next 
year he again enlisted, and men of his Berkshire 
neighborhood, likewise enlisting, insisted that he 
be their captain; and Governor Andrews, appealed 
to, consented to commission the nineteen-year- 
old youth who was so evidently a natural leader; 
and the men gave freely of their scant money to 
get for him a sword, all gay and splendid with 
gilt, and upon the sword was the declaration in 
stately Latin that, "True friendship is eternal." 

And with that sword is associated the most 
vivid, the most momentous experience of Russell 
Conwell's life. 

That sword hangs at the head of Conwell's 
bed in his home in Philadelphia. Man of peace 
that he is, and minister of peace, that symbol of 
war has for over half a century been of infinite 
importance to him. 

He told me the story as we stood together before 
that sword. And as he told the story, speaking 
with quiet repression, but seeing it all and living 
it all just as vividly as if it had occurred but yes- 
terday, "That sword has meant so much to me," 
he murmured; and then he began the tale: 

"A boy up there in the Berkshires, a neighbor's 
son, was John Ring; I call him a boy, for we all 

70 



STORY OF THE SWORD 

called him a boy, and we looked upon him as a 
boy, for he was under-sized and under-developed — 
so much so that he could not enlist. 

"But for some reason he was devoted to me, 
and he not only wanted to enlist, but he also 
wanted to be in the artillery company of which I 
was captain; and I could only take him along as 
my servant. I didn't want a servant, but it was 
the only way to take poor little Johnnie Ring. 

"Johnnie was deeply religious, and would read 
the Bible every evening before turning in. In 
those days I was an atheist, or at least thought I 
was, and I used to laugh at Ring, and after a while 
he took to reading the Bible outside the tent on 
account of my laughing at him! But he did not 
stop reading it, and his faithfulness to me remained 
unchanged. 

"The scabbard of the sword was too glittering 
for the regulations" — the ghost of a smile hovered 
on Conwell's lips — "and I could not wear it, and 
could only wear a plain one for service and keep 
this hanging in my tent on the tent-pole. John 
Ring used to handle it adoringly, and kept it 
polished to brilliancy. — It's dull enough these 
many years," he added, somberly. "To Ring 
it represented not only his captain, but the very 
glory and pomp of war. 

"One day the Confederates suddenly stormed 
our position near New Berne and swept through 
the camp, driving our entire force before them; 
and all, including my company, retreated hurriedly 

6 71 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

across the river, setting fire to a long wooden 
bridge as we went over. It soon blazed up furi- 
ously, making a barrier that the Confederates 
could not pass. 

"But, unknown to everybody, and unnoticed, 
John Ring had dashed back to my tent. I think 
he was able to make his way back because he just 
looked like a mere boy; but however that was, he 
got past the Confederates into my tent and took 
down, from where it was hanging on the tent- 
pole, my bright, gold-scabbarded sword. 

"John Ring seized the sword that had long been 
so precious to him. He dodged here and there, 
and actually managed to gain the bridge just as it 
was beginning to blaze. He started across. The 
flames were every moment getting fiercer, the 
smoke denser, and now and then, as he crawled 
and staggered on, he leaned for a few seconds far 
over the edge of the bridge in an effort to get air. 
Both sides saw him; both sides watched his 
terrible progress, even while firing was fiercely 
kept up from each side of the river. And then 
a Confederate officer — he was one of General 
Pickett's officers — ran to the water's edge 
andr waved a white handkerchief and the firing 
ceased. 

"'Tell that boy to come back here!' he cried. 
'Tell him to come back here and we will let him 
go free !' 

"He called this out just as Ring was about to 
enter upon the worst part of the bridge — the cov- 

72 



STORY OF THE SWORD 

ered part, where there were top and bottom and 
sides of blazing wood. The roar of the flames 
was so close to Ring that he could not hear the 
calls from either side of the river, and he pushed 
desperately on and disappeared in the covered 
part. 

"There was dead silence except for the crackling 
of the fire. Not a man cried out. All waited in 
hopeless expectancy. And then came a mighty 
yell from Northerner and Southerner alike, for 
Johnnie came crawling out of the end of the cov- 
ered way — he had actually passed through that 
frightful place — and his clothes were ablaze, and 
he toppled over and fell into shallow water; and 
in a few moments he was dragged out, unconscious, 
and hurried to a hospital. 

"He lingered for a day or so, still unconscious, 
and then came to himself and smiled a little as 
he found that the sword for which he had given 
his life had been left beside him. He took it in 
his arms. He hugged it to his breast. He gave 
a few words of final message for me. And that 
was all." 

Con well's voice had gone thrillingly low as he 
neared the end, for it was all so very, very vivid to 
him, and his eyes had grown tender and his lips 
more strong and firm. And he fell silent, thinking 
of that long-ago happening, and though he looked 
down upon the thronging traffic of Broad Street, 
it was clear that he did not see it, and that if 
the rumbling hubbub of sound meant anything to 

73 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

him it was the rumbling of the guns of the distant 
past. When he spoke again it was with a still 
tenser tone of feeling. 

1 'When I stood beside the body of John Ring 
and realized that he had died for love of me, I 
made a vow that has formed my life. I vowed 
that from that moment I would live not only my 
own life, but that I would also live the life of John 
Ring. And from that moment I have worked six- 
teen hours every day — eight for John Ring's work 
and eight hours for my own." 

A curious note had come into his voice, as of 
one who had run the race and neared the goal, 
fought the good fight and neared the end. 

"Every morning when I rise I look at this sword, 
or if I am away from home I think of the sword, 
and vow anew that another day shall see sixteen 
hours of work from me." And when one comes 
to know Russell Conwell one realizes that never 
did a man work more hard and constantly. 

"It was through John Ring and his giving his 
life through devotion to me that I became a 
Christian," he went on. "This did not come 
about immediately, but it came before the war 
was over, and it came through faithful Johnnie 
Ring." 

There is a little lonely cemetery in the Berk- 
shires, a tiny burying-ground on a wind-swept 
hill, a few miles from Conwell's old home. In 
this isolated burying-ground bushes and vines and 
grass grow in profusion, and a few trees cast a 

74 



STORY OF THE SWORD 

gentle shade; and tree-clad hills go billowing off 
for miles and miles in wild and lonely beauty. 
And in that lonely little graveyard I found the 
plain stone that marks the resting-place of John 
Ring. 



II 

THE BEGINNING AT OLD LEXINGTON 

IT is not because he is a minister that Russell 
Con well is such a force in the world. He 
went into the ministry because he was sincerely 
and profoundly a Christian, and because he felt 
that as a minister he could do more good in. the 
world than in any other capacity. But being a 
minister is but an incident, so to speak. The im- 
portant thing is not that he is a minister, but that 
he is himself ! 

Recently I heard a New-Yorker, the head of 
a great corporation, say: "I believe that Russell 
Conwell is doing more good in the world than any 
man who has lived since Jesus Christ." And 
he said this in serious and unexaggerated earnest. 

Yet Conwell did not get readily into his life- 
work. He might have seemed almost a failure 
until he was well on toward forty, for although he 
kept making successes they were not permanent 
successes, and he did not settle himself into a 
definite line. He restlessly went westward to 
make his home, and then restlessly returned to 

76 



AT OLD LEXINGTON 

the East. After the war was over he was a lawyer, 
he was a lecturer, he was an editor, he went around 
the world as a correspondent, he wrote books. 
He kept making money, and kept losing it ; he lost 
it through fire, through investments, through aid- 
ing his friends. It is probable that the unsettled- 
ness of the years following the war was due to the 
unsettling effect of the war itself, which thus, in 
its influence, broke into his mature life after 
breaking into his years at Yale. But however that 
may be, those seething, changing, stirring years 
were years of vital importance to him, for in the 
myriad experiences of that time he was building 
the foundation of the Conwell that was to come. 
Abroad he met the notables of the earth. At 
home he made hosts of friends and loyal admirers. 

It is worth while noting that as a lawyer he 
would never take a case, either civil or criminal, 
that he considered wrong. It was basic with him 
that he could not and would not fight on what 
he thought was the wrong side. Only when his 
client was right would he go ahead ! 

Yet he laughs, his quiet, infectious, character- 
istic laugh, as he tells of how once he was deceived, 
for he defended a man, charged with stealing a 
watch, who was so obviously innocent that he 
took the case in a blaze of indignation and had 
the young fellow proudly exonerated. The next 
day the wrongly accused one came to his office 
and shamefacedly took out the watch that he 
had been charged with stealing. "I want you to 

77 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

send it to the man I took it from/' he said. And 
he told with a sort of shamefaced pride of how 
he had got a good old deacon to give, in all sin- 
cerity, the evidence that exculpated him. "And, 
say, Mr. Conwell — I want to thank you for 
getting me off — and I hope you'll excuse my de- 
ceiving you — and — I won't be any worse for not 
going to jail." And Conwell likes to remember 
that thereafter the young man lived up to the 
pride of exoneration; and, though Conwell does 
not say it or think it, one knows that it was the 
Conwell influence that inspired to honesty — for 
always he is an inspirer. 

Conwell even kept certain hours for consulta- 
tion with those too poor to pay any fee; and at 
one time, while still an active lawyer, he was 
guardian for over sixty children! The man has 
always been a marvel, and always one is coming 
upon such romantic facts as these. 

That is a curious thing about him — how much 
there is of romance in his life! Worshiped to the 
end by John Ring; left for dead all night at 
Kenesaw Mountain; calmly singing "Nearer, my 
God, to Thee," to quiet the passengers on a sup- 
posedly sinking ship; saving lives even when a 
boy; never disappointing a single audience of the 
thousands of audiences he has arranged to address 
during all his years of lecturing ! He himself takes 
a little pride in this last point, and it is character- 
istic of him that he has actually forgotten that 
just once he did fail to appear: he has quite 

78 



AT OLD LEXINGTON 

forgotten that one evening, on his way to a lec- 
ture, he stopped a runaway horse to save two 
women's lives, and went in consequence to a hos- 
pital instead of to the platform ! And it is typical 
of him to forget that sort of thing. 

The emotional temperament of Conwell has al- 
ways made him responsive to the great, the strik- 
ing, the patriotic. He was deeply influenced by 
knowing John Brown, and his brief memories of 
Lincoln are intense, though he saw him but three 
times in all. 

The first time he saw Lincoln was on the night 
when the future President delivered the address, 
which afterward became so famous, in Cooper 
Union, New York. The name of Lincoln was then 
scarcely known, and it was by mere chance that 
young Conwell happened to be in New York on 
that day. But being there, and learning that 
Abraham Lincoln from the West was going to 
make an address, he went to hear him. 

He tells how uncouthly Lincoln was dressed, 
even with one trousers-leg higher than the other, 
and of how awkward he was, and of how poorly, 
at first, he spoke and with what apparent em- 
barrassment. The chairman of the meeting got 
Lincoln a glass of water, and Conwell thought 
that it was from a personal desire to help him and 
keep him from breaking down. But he loves to 
tell how Lincoln became a changed man as he 
spoke ; how he seemed to feel ashamed of his brief 
embarrassment and, pulling himself together and 

79 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

putting aside the written speech which he had 
prepared, spoke freely and powerfully, with splen- 
did conviction, as only a born orator speaks. To 
Conwell it was a tremendous experience. 

The second time he saw Lincoln was when 
he went to Washington to plead for the life of one 
of his men who had been condemned to death 
for sleeping on post. He was still but a captain 
(his promotion to a colonelcy was still to come), 
a youth, and was awed by going into the presence 
of the man he worshiped. And>his voice trembles** 
a little, even now, as he tells of how pleasantly 
Lincoln looked up from his desk, and how cheer- 
fully he asked his business with him, and of how 
absorbedly Lincoln then listened to his tale, al- 
though, so it appeared, he already knew of the 
main outline. 

"It will be all right,' ' said Lincoln, when Con- 
well finished. But Conwell was still frightened. 
He feared that in the multiplicity of public mat- 
ters this mere matter of the life of a mountain 
boy, a private soldier, might be forgotten till too 
late. "It is almost the time set — " he faltered. 
And Conwell's voice almost breaks, man of emo- 
tion that he is, as he tells of how Lincoln said, 
with stern gravity: "Go and telegraph that sol- 
dier's mother that Abraham Lincoln never signed 
a warrant to shoot a boy under twenty, and never 
will." That was the one and only time that he 
spoke with Lincoln, and it remains an indelible 
impression. 

80 



AT OLD LEXINGTON 

The third time he saw Lincoln was when, as 
officer of the day, he stood for hours beside the 
dead body of the President as it lay in state in 
Washington. In those hours, as he stood rigidly 
as the throng went shuffling sorrowfully through, 
an immense impression came to Colonel Conwell 
of the work and worth of the man who there lay 
dead, and that impression has never departed. 

John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, old Revolu- 
tionary Lexington — how Conwell's life is asso- 
ciated with famous men and places! — and it was 
actually at Lexington that he made the crucial 
decision as to the course of his life ! And it seems 
to me that it was, although quite unconsciously, 
because of the very fact that it was Lexington that 
Conwell was influenced to decide and to act as 
he did. Had it been in some other kind of place, 
some merely ordinary place, some quite usual 
place, he might not have taken the important 
step. But it was Lexington, it was brave old 
Lexington, inspiring Lexington; and he was in- 
spired by it, for the man who himself inspires 
nobly is always the one who is himself open to 
noble inspiration. Lexington inspired him. 

"When I was a lawyer in Boston and almost 
thirty-seven years old," he told me, thinking 
slowly back into the years, "I was consulted by 
a woman who asked my advice in regard to dis- 
posing of a little church in Lexington whose con- 
gregation had become unable to support it. I 
went out and looked at the place, and I told her 

81 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

how the property could be sold. But it seemed a 
pity to me that the little church should be given 
up. However, I advised a meeting of the church 
members, and I attended the meeting. I put the 
case to them — it was only a handful of men and 
women — and there was silence for a little. Then 
an old man rose and, in a quavering voice, said 
the matter was quite clear; that there evidently 
was nothing to do but to sell, and that he would 
agree with the others in the necessity; but as 
the church had been his church home from boy- 
hood, so he quavered and quivered on, he begged 
that they would excuse him from actually taking 
part in disposing of it; and in a deep silence he 
went haltingly from the room. 

"The men and the women looked at one an- 
other, still silent, sadly impressed, but not knowing 
what to do. And I said to them: 'Why not start 
over again, and go on with the church, after all I'" 

Typical Conwellism, that! First, the impulse 
to help those who need helping, then the inspira- 
tion and leadership. 

'"But the building is entirely too tumble- 
down to use,' said one of the men, sadly; and I 
knew he was right, for I had examined it; but I 
said: 

"'Let us meet there to-morrow morning and 
get to work on that building ourselves and put 
it in shape for a service next Sunday.' 

"It made them seem so pleased and encour- 
aged, and so confident that a new possibility was 

82 



AT OLD LEXINGTON 

opening that I never doubted that each one of 
those present, and many friends besides, would 
be at the building in the morning. I was there 
early with a hammer and ax and crowbar that I 
had secured, ready to go to work — but no one else 
showed up!" 

He has a rueful appreciation of the humor of 
it, as he pictured the scene; and one knows also 
that, in that little town of Lexington, where 
Americans had so bravely faced the impossible, 
Russell Conwell also braced himself to face the 
impossible. A pettier man would instantly have 
given up the entire matter when those who were 
most interested failed to respond, but one of the 
strongest features in Conwell's character is his 
ability to draw even doubters and weaklings into 
line, his ability to stir even those who have 
given up. 

"I looked over that building," he goes on, 
whimsically, "and I saw that repair really seemed 
out of the question. Nothing but a new church 
would do! So I took the ax that I had brought 
with me and began chopping the place down. 
In a little while a man, not one of the church 
members, came along, and he watched me for a 
time and said, 'What are you going to do there?' 

"And I instantly replied, 'Tear down this old 
building and build a new church here !' 

"He looked at me. 'But the people won't 
do that,' he said. 

"'Yes, they will,' I said, cheerfully, keeping at 
83 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

my work. Whereupon he watched me a few min- 
utes longer and said : 

"'Well, you can put me down for one hundred 
dollars for the new building. Come up to my 
livery-stable and get it this evening/ 

"'AH right; I'll surely be there/ I replied. 

"In a little while another man came along and 
stopped and looked, and he rather gibed at the 
idea of a new church, and when I told him of the 
livery-stable man contributing one hundred dol- 
lars, he said, 'But you haven't got the money yet!' 

" 'No,' I said; 'but I am going to get it to-night.' 

"'You'll never get it,' he said. 'He's not that 
sort of a man. He's not even a church man !' 

"But I just went quietly on with the work, 
without answering, and after quite a while he 
left; but he called back, as he went off, 'Well, if 
he does give you that hundred dollars, come to 
me and I'll give you another hundred.'" 

Conwell smiles in genial reminiscence and with- 
out any apparent sense that he is telling of a great 
personal triumph, and goes on: 

"Those two men both paid the money, and of 
course the church people themselves, who at first 
had not quite understood that I could be in ear- 
nest, joined in and helped, with work and money, 
and as, while the new church was building, it was 
peculiarly important to get and keep the congre- 
gation together, and as they had ceased to have 
a minister of their own, I used to run out from 
Boston and preach for them, in a room we hired. 

84 



AT OLD LEXINGTON 

"And it was there in Lexington, in 1879, that 
I determined to become a minister. I had a good 
law practice, but I determined to give it up. For 
many years I had felt more or less of a call to 
the ministry, and here at length was the definite 
time to begin. 

"Week by week I preached there" — how 
strange, now, to think of William Dean Howells 
and the colonel-preacher! — "and after a while 
the church was completed, and in that very 
church, there in Lexington, I was ordained a 
minister." 

A marvelous thing, all this, even without con- 
sidering the marvelous heights that Conwell has 
since attained — a marvelous thing, an achieve- 
ment of positive romance! That little church 
stood for American bravery and initiative and 
self-sacrifice and romanticism in a way that well 
befitted good old Lexington. 

To leave a large and overflowing law practice 
and take up the ministry at a salary of six hundred 
dollars a year seemed to the relatives of Conwell's 
wife the extreme of foolishness, and they did not 
hesitate so to express themselves. Naturally 
enough, they did not have Conwell's vision. Yet 
he himself was fair enough to realize and to admit 
that there was a good deal of fairness in their 
objections; and so he said to the congregation 
that, although he was quite ready to come for 
the six hundred dollars a year, he expected them 
to double his salary as soon as he doubled the 

85 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

church membership. This seemed to them a 
good deal like a joke, but they answered in perfect 
earnestness that they would be quite willing to 
do the doubling as soon as he did the doubling, 
and in less than a year the salary was doubled 
accordingly. 

I asked him if he had found it hard to give up 
the lucrative law for a poor ministry, and his 
reply gave a delightful impression of his capacity 
for humorous insight into human nature, for he 
said, with a genial twinkle: 

"Oh yes, it was a wrench; but there is a sort 
of romance of self-sacrifice, you know. I rather 
suppose the old-time martyrs rather enjoyed them- 
selves in being martyrs!" 

Conwell did not stay very long in Lexington. 
A struggling little church in Philadelphia heard 
of what he was doing, and so an old deacon went 
up to see and hear him, and an invitation was 
given; and as the Lexington church seemed to 
be prosperously on its feet, and the needs of the 
Philadelphia body keenly appealed to Conwell's 
imagination, a change was made, and at a salary 
of eight hundred dollars a year he went, in 1882, 
to the little struggling Philadelphia congregation, 
and of that congregation he is still pastor — only, 
it ceased to be a struggling congregation a great 
many years ago! And long ago it began paying 
him more thousands every year than at first it 
gave him hundreds. 

Dreamer as Conwell always is in connection 
86 



AT OLD LEXINGTON 

with his immense practicality, and moved as he 
is by the spiritual influences of life, it is more than 
likely that not only did Philadelphia's need ap- 
peal, but also the fact that Philadelphia, as a city, 
meant much to him, for, coming North, wounded 
from a battle-field of the Civil War, it was in 
Philadelphia that he was cared for until his health 
and strength were recovered. Thus it came that 
Philadelphia had early become dear to him. 

And here is an excellent example of how dream- 
ing great dreams may go hand-in-hand with win- 
ning superb results. For that little struggling 
congregation now owns and occupies a great 
new church building that seats more people than 
any other Protestant church in America — and 
Dr. Conwell fills it! 

7 



Ill 

STORY OF THE FIFTY-SEVEN CENTS 

AT every point in Conwell's life one sees that 
i\ he wins through his wonderful personal influ- 
ence on old and young. Every step forward, 
every triumph achieved, comes not alone from 
his own enthusiasm, but because of his putting 
that enthusiasm into others. And when I learned 
how it came about that the present church build- 
ings were begun, it was another of those marvelous 
tales of fact that are stranger than any imagina- 
tion could make them. And yet the tale was so 
simple and sweet and sad and unpretending. 

When Dr. Conwell first assumed charge of the 
little congregation that led him to Philadelphia 
it was really a little church both in its numbers 
and in the size of the building that it occupied, 
but it quickly became so popular under his 
leadership that the church services and Sunday- 
school services were alike so crowded that there 
was no room for all who came, and always there 
were people turned from the doors. 

One afternoon a little girl, who had eagerly 
88 



THE FIFTY-SEVEN CENTS 

wished to go, turned back from the Sunday-school 
door, crying bitterly because they had told her 
that there was no more room. But a tall, black- 
haired man met her and noticed her tears and, 
stopping, asked why it was that she was crying, 
and she sobbingly replied that it was because 
they could not let her into the Sunday-school. 

"I lifted her to my shoulder," says. Dr. Con- 
well, in telling of this; for after hearing the story 
elsewhere I asked him to tell it to me himself, 
for it seemed almost too strange to be true. 
"I lifted her to my shoulder" — and one realizes 
the pretty scene it must have made for the little 
girl to go through the crowd of people, drying 
her tears and riding proudly on the shoulders of 
the kindly, tall, dark man! "I said to her that 
I would take her in, and I did so, and I said to 
her that we should some day have a room big 
enough for all who should come. And when she 
went home she told her parents — I only learned 
this afterward — that she was going to save money 
to help build the larger church and Sunday-school 
that Dr. Conwell wanted ! Her parents pleasantly 
humored her in the idea and let her run errands 
and do little tasks to earn pennies, and she began 
dropping the pennies into her bank. 

"She was a lovable little thing — but in only a 
few weeks after that she was taken suddenly ill 
and died; and at the funeral her father told me, 
quietly, of how his little girl had been saving money 
for a building-fund. And there, at the funeral, 

39 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

he handed me what she had saved — just fifty- 
seven cents in pennies." 

Dr. Conwell does not say how deeply he was 
moved; he is, after all, a man of very few words 
as to his own emotions. But a deep tenderness 
had crept into his voice. 

4 'At a meeting of the church trustees I told of 
this gift of fifty-seven cents — the first gift toward 
the proposed building-fund of the new church that 
was some time to exist. For until then the matter 
had barely been spoken of, as a new church build- 
ing had been simply a possibility for the future. 

"The trustees seemed much impressed, and it 
turned out that they were far more impressed 
than I could possibly have hoped, for in a few 
days one of them came to me and said that he 
thought it would be an excellent idea to buy a 
lot on Broad Street — the very lot on which the 
building now stands." It was characteristic of 
Dr. Conwell that he did not point out, what every 
one who knows him would understand, that it was 
his own inspiration put into the trustees which 
resulted in this quick and definite move on the 
part of one of them. "I talked the matter over 
with the owner of the property, and told him of 
the beginning of the fund, the story of the little 
girl. The man was not one of our church, nor, 
in fact, was he a church-goer at all, but he listened 
attentively to the tale of the fifty-seven cents 
and simply said he was quite ready to go ahead 
and sell us that piece of land for ten thousand 

90 



THE FIFTY-SEVEN CENTS 

dollars, taking — and the unexpectedness of this 
deeply touched me — taking a first payment of just 
fifty-seven cents and letting the entire balance 
stand on a five-per-cent. mortgage! 

' 'And it seemed to me that it would be the 
right thing to accept this unexpectedly liberal 
proposition, and I went over the entire matter 
on that basis with the trustees and some of the 
other members, and all the people were soon 
talking of having a new church. But it was not 
done in that way, after all, for, fine though that 
way would have been, there was to be one still 
finer. 

"Not long after my talk with the man who 
owned the land, and his surprisingly good-hearted 
proposition, an exchange was arranged for me one 
evening with a Mount Holly church, and my wife 
went with me. We came back late, and it was 
cold and wet and miserable, but as we approached 
our home we saw that it was all lighted from 
top to bottom, and it was clear that it was full 
of people. I said to my wife that they seemed to 
be having a better time than we had had, and we 
went in, curious to know what it was all about. 
And it turned out that our absence had been in- 
tentionally arranged, and that the church people 
had gathered at our home to meet us on our re- 
turn. And I was utterly amazed, for the spokes- 
man told me that the entire ten thousand dollars 
had been raised and that the land for the church 
that I wanted was free of debt. And all had come 

91 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

so quickly and directly from that dear little girl's 
fifty-seven cents." 

Doesn't it seem like a fairy tale! But then this 
man has all his life been making fairy tales into 
realities. He inspired the child. He inspired the 
trustees. He inspired the owner of the land. He 
inspired the people. 

The building of the great church — the Temple 
Baptist Church, as it is termed — was a great 
undertaking for the congregation; even though 
it had been swiftly growing from the day of Dr. 
Conwell's taking charge of it, it was something 
far ahead of what, except in the eyes of an enthu- 
siast, they could possibly complete and pay for 
and support. Nor was it an easy task. 

Ground was broken for the building in 1889, 
in 189 1 it was opened for worship, and then 
came years, of raising money to clear it. But it 
was long ago placed completely out of debt, and 
with only a single large subscription— one of ten 
thousand dollars— for the church is not in a 
wealthy neighborhood, nor is the congregation 
made up of the great and rich. 

The church is built of stone, and its interior 
is a great amphitheater. Special attention has 
been given to fresh air and light ; there is nothing 
of the dim, religious light that goes with medieval 
churchliness. Behind the pulpit are tiers of seats 
for the great chorus choir. There is a large organ. 
The building is peculiarly adapted for hearing 
and seeing, and if it is not, strictly speaking, 

92 



THE FIFTY-SEVEN CENTS 

beautiful in itself, it is beautiful when it is filled 
with encircling rows of men and women. 

Man of feeling that he is, and one who appre- 
ciates the importance of symbols, Dr. Con well 
had a heart of olive-wood built into the front of the 
pulpit, for the wood was from an olive-tree in the 
Garden of Gethsemane. And the amber-colored 
tiles in the inner walls of the church bear, under 
the glaze, the names of thousands of his people; 
for every one, young or old, who helped in the 
building, even to the giving of a single dollar, has 
his name inscribed there. For Dr. Conwell wished 
to show that it is not only the house of the Lord, 
but also, in a keenly personal sense, the house of 
those who built it. 

The church has a possible seating capacity of 
4,200, although only 3,135 chairs have been put 
in it, for it has been the desire not to crowd the 
space needlessly. There is also a great room for 
the Sunday-school, and extensive rooms for the 
young men's association, the young women's asso- 
ciation, and for a kitchen, for executive offices, 
for meeting-places for church officers and boards 
and committees. It is a spacious and practical 
and complete church home, and the people feel 
at home there. 

"You see again," said Dr. Conwell, musingly, 
"the advantage of aiming at big things. That 
building represents $109,000 above ground. It 
is free from debt. Had we built a small church, it 
would now be heavily mortgaged." 



IV 

HIS POWER AS ORATOR AND PREACHER 

EVEN as a young man Con well won local fame 
as an orator. At the outbreak of the Civil 
War he began making patriotic speeches that 
gained enlistments. After going to the front he 
was sent back home for a time, on furlough, to 
make more speeches to draw more recruits, for his 
speeches were so persuasive, so powerful, so full 
of homely and patriotic feeling, that the men who 
heard them thronged into the ranks. And as a 
preacher he uses persuasion, power, simple and 
homely eloquence, to draw men to the ranks of 
Christianity. 

He is an orator born, and has developed this 
inborn power by the hardest of study and thought 
and practice. He is one of those rare men who 
always seize and hold the attention. When he 
speaks, men listen. It is quality, temperament, 
control — the word is immaterial, but the fact is 
very material indeed. 

Some quarter of a century ago Conwell published 
a little book for students on the study and practice 

94 



ORATOR AND PREACHER 

of oratory. That "clear-cut articulation is the 
charm of eloquence" is one of his insisted-upon 
statements, and it well illustrates the lifelong 
practice of the man himself, for every word as 
he talks can be heard in every part of a large build- 
ing, yet always he speaks without apparent effort. 
He avoids " elocution." His voice is soft -pitched 
and never breaks, even now when he is over 
seventy, because, so he explains it, he always 
speaks in his natural voice. There is never a 
straining after effect. 

"A speaker must possess a large-hearted regard 
for the welfare of his audience," he writes, and 
here again we see Conwell explaining Conwellism. 
"Enthusiasm invites enthusiasm," is another of his 
points of importance; and one understands that 
it is by deliberate purpose, and not by chance, 
that he tries with such tremendous effort to put 
enthusiasm into his hearers with every sermon 
and every lecture that he delivers. 

"It is easy to raise a laugh, but dangerous, for 
it is the greatest test of an orator's control of his 
audience to be able to land them again on the 
solid earth of sober thinking." I have known 
him at the very end of a sermon have a ripple of 
laughter sweep freely over the entire congregation, 
and then in a moment he has every individual 
under his control, listening soberly to his words. 

He never fears to use humor, and it is always 
very simple and obvious and effective. With him 
even a very simple pun may be used, not only with- 

95 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

out taking away from the strength of what he is 
saying, but with a vivid increase of impressive- 
ness. And when he says something funny it is 
in such a delightful and confidential way, with 
such a genial, quiet, infectious humor ousness, that 
his audience is captivated. And they never think 
that he is telling something funny of his own; 
it seems, such is the skill of the man, that he is 
just letting them know of something humorous 
that they are to enjoy with him. 

"Be absolutely truthful and scrupulously clear," 
he writes; and with delightfully terse common 
sense, he says, "Use illustrations that illustrate" — 
and never did an orator live up to this injunction 
more than does Conwell himself. Nothing is more 
surprising, nothing is more interesting, than the 
way in which he makes use as illustrations of the 
impressions and incidents of his long and varied 
life, and, whatever it is, it has direct and instant 
bearing on the progress of his discourse. He will 
refer to something that he heard a child say in a 
train yesterday; in a few minutes he will speak 
of something that he saw or some one whom he 
met last month, or last year, or ten years ago — 
in Ohio, in California, in London, in Paris, in 
New York, in Bombay; and each memory, each 
illustration, is a hammer with which he drives 
home a truth. 

The vast number of places he has visited and 
people he has met, the infinite variety of things his 
observant eyes have seen, give him his ceaseless 

96 



ORATOR AND PREACHER 

flow of illustrations, and his memory and his 
skill make admirable use of them. It is seldom 
that he uses an illustration from what he has 
read; everything is, characteristically, his own. 
Henry M. Stanley, who knew him well, referred 
to him as "that double-sighted Yankee," who 
could "see at a glance all there is and all there 
ever was." 

And never was there a man who so supplements 
with personal reminiscence the place or the per- 
son that has figured in the illustration. When 
he illustrates with the story of the discovery of 
California gold at Sutter's he almost parenthet- 
ically remarks, "I delivered this lecture on that 
very spot a few years ago; that is, in the town 
that arose on that very spot." And when he il- 
lustrates by the story of the invention of the 
sewing-machine, he adds: "I suppose that if any 
of you were asked who was the inventor of the 
sewing-machine, you would say that it was Elias 
Howe. But that would be a mistake. I was 
with Elias Howe in the Civil War, and he often 
used to tell me how he had tried for fourteen years 
to invent the sewing-machine and that then his 
wife, feeling that something really had to be done, 
invented it in a couple of hours." Listening to 
him, you begin to feel in touch with everybody 
and everything, and in a friendly and intimate 
way. 

Always, whether in the pulpit or on the platform, 
as in private conversation, there is an absolute 

97 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

simplicity about the man and his words; a sim- 
plicity, an earnestness, a complete honesty. And 
when he sets down, in his book on oratory, "A 
man has no right to use words carelessly," he 
stands for that respect for word-craftsmanship 
that every successful speaker or writer must feel. 

"Be intensely in earnest," he writes; and in 
writing this he sets down a prime principle not 
only of his oratory, but of his life. 

A young minister told me that Dr. Conwell 
once said to him, with deep feeling, "Always re- 
member, as you preach, that you are striving to 
save at least one soul with every sermon." And 
to one of his close friends Dr. Conwell said, in 
one of his self -revealing conversations: 

"I feel, whenever I preach, that there is always 
one person in the congregation to whom, in all 
probability, I shall never preach again, and there- 
fore I feel that I must exert my utmost power 
in that last chance." And in this, even if this were 
all, one sees why each of his sermons is so impres- 
sive, and why his energy never lags. Always, 
with him, is the feeling that he is in the world to 
do all the good he can possibly do ; not a moment, 
not an opportunity, must be lost. 

The moment he rises and steps to the front 
of his pulpit he has the attention of every one in 
the building, and this attention he closely holds 
till he is through. Yet it is never by a striking 
effort that attention is gained, except in so far 
that his utter simplicity is striking. "I want 

98 



ORATOR AND PREACHER 

to preach so simply that you will not think it 
preaching, but just that you are listening to a 
friend," I remember his saying, one Sunday morn- 
ing, as he began his sermon ; and then he went on 
just as simply as such homely, kindly, friendly 
words promised. And how effectively! 

He believes that everything should be so put 
as to be understood by all, and this belief he 
applies not only to his preaching, but to the read- 
ing of the Bible, whose descriptions he not only 
visualizes to himself, but makes vividly clear to his 
hearers; and this often makes for fascination in 
result. 

For example, he is reading the tenth chapter of 
I Samuel, and begins, '"Thou shalt meet a com- 
pany of prophets.' " 

'"Singers,' it should be translated," he puts in, 
lifting his eyes from the page and looking out over 
his people. Then he goes on, taking this change as 
a matter of course, '"Thou shalt meet a company 
of singers coming down from the high place — ' " 

Whereupon he again interrupts himself, and 
in an irresistible explanatory aside, which instantly 
raises the desired picture in the mind of every 
one, he says: "That means, from the little old 
church on the hill, you know." And how plain 
and clear and real and interesting — most of all, 
interesting — it is from this moment! Another 
man would have left it that prophets were coming 
down from a high place, which would not have 
seemed at all alive or natural, and here, suddenly, 

99 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

Conwell has flashed his picture of the singers 
coming down from the little old church on the 
hill! There is magic in doing that sort of thing. 

And he goes on, now reading: '"Thou shall 
meet a company of singers coming down from 
the little old church on the hill, with a psaltery, 
and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp, and they 
shall sing.' " 

Music is one of Conwell's strongest aids. He 
sings himself; sings as if he likes to sing, and often 
finds himself leading the singing — usually so, 
indeed, at the prayer-meetings, and often, in 
effect, at the church services. 

I remember at one church service that the 
choir-leader was standing in front of the massed 
choir ostensibly leading the singing, but that 
Conwell himself, standing at the rear of the 
pulpit platform, with his eyes on his hymn-book, 
silently swaying a little with the music and un- 
consciously beating time as he .swayed, was just 
as unconsciously the real leader, for it was he 
whom the congregation were watching and with 
him that they were keeping time! He never 
suspected it; he was merely thinking along with 
the music; and there was such a look of con- 
tagious happiness on his face as made every one 
in the building similarly happy. For he possesses 
a mysterious faculty of imbuing others with his 
own happiness. 

Not only singers, but the modern equivalent 
of psaltery and tabret and cymbals, all have their 

IOO 



ORATOR AND PREACHER 

place in Dr. Conwell's scheme of church service; 
for there may be a piano, and there may even be 
a trombone, and there is a great organ to help 
the voices, and at times there are chiming bells. 
His musical taste seems to tend toward the 
thunderous — or perhaps it is only that he knows 
there are times when people like to hear the 
thunderous and are moved by it. 

And how the choir themselves like it! They 
occupy a great curving space behind the pulpit, 
and put their hearts into song. And as the con- 
gregation disperse and the choir filter down, some- 
times they are still singing and some of them con- 
tinue to sing as they go slowly out toward the 
doors. They are happy — Con well himself is 
happy — all the congregation are happy. He makes 
everybody feel happy in coming to church; he 
makes the church attractive just as Howells was 
so long ago told that he did in Lexington. 

And there is something more than happiness; 
there is a sense of ease, of comfort, of general joy, 
that is quite unmistakable. There is nothing of 
stiffness or constraint. And with it all there is 
full reverence. It is no wonder that he is accus- 
tomed to fill every seat of the great building. 

His gestures are usually very simple. Now and 
then, when he works up to emphasis, he strikes 
one fist in the palm of the other hand. When he 
is through you do not remember that he has made 
any gestures at all, but the sound of his voice 
remains with you, and the look of his wonderful 

IOI 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

eyes. And though he is past the threescore years 
and ten, he looks out over his people with eyes that 
still have the veritable look of youth. 

Like all great men, he not only does big things, 
but keeps in touch with myriad details.. When 
his assistant, announcing the funeral of an old 
member, hesitates about the street and number 
and says that they can be found in the telephone 
directory, Dr. Conwell's deep voice breaks quietly 
in with, "Such a number [giving it], Dauphin 
Street" — quietly, and \n a low tone, yet every 
one in the church hears distinctly every syllable 
of that low voice. 

His fund of personal anecdote, or personal rem- 
iniscence, is constant and illustrative in his preach- 
ing, just as it is when he lectures, and the reminis- 
cences sweep through many years, and at times 
are really startling in the vivid and homelike 
pictures they present of the famous folk of the 
past that he knew. 

One Sunday evening he made an almost casual 
reference to the time when he first met Garfield, 
then a candidate for the Presidency. "I asked 
Major McKinley, whom I had met in Washington, 
and whose home was in northern Ohio, as was 
that of Mr. Garfield, to go with me to Mr. Gar- 
field's home and introduce me. When we got 
there, a neighbor had to find him. 'Jim! Jim!' 
he called. You see, Garfield was just plain Jim 
to his old neighbors. It's hard to recognize a 
hero over your back fence!" He paused a mo- 

102 



ORATOR AND PREACHER 

ment for the appreciative ripple to subside, and 
went on : 

"We three talked there together" — what a 
rare talking that must have been — McKinley, 
Garfield, and Conwell — "we talked together, and 
after a while we got to the subject of hymns, and 
those two great men both told me how deeply 
they loved the old hymn, 'The Old-Time Re- 
ligion.' Garfield especially loved it, so he told 
us, because the good old man who brought him 
up as a boy and to whom he owed such gratitude, 
used to sing it at the pasture bars outside of the 
boy's window every morning, and young Jim 
knew, whenever he heard that old tune, that it 
meant it was time for him to get up. He said 
that he had heard the best concerts and the finest 
operas in the world, but had never heard anything 
he loved as he still loved 'The Old-Time Religion.' 
I forget what reason there was for McKinley's 
especially liking it, but he, as did Garfield, liked 
it immensely." 

What followed was a striking example of Con- 
well's intentness on losing no chance to fix an 
impression on his hearers' minds, and at the same 
time it was a really astonishing proof of his power 
to move and sway. For a new expression came 
over his face, and he said, as if the idea had only 
at that moment occurred to him — as it most 
probably had — "I think it's in our hymnal!" 
And in a moment he announced the number, 
and the great organ struck up, and every person 

8 103 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

in the great church — every man, woman, and child 
— joined in the swinging rhythm of verse after 
verse, as if they could never tire, of "The Old- 
Time Religion." It is a simple melody — barely 
more than a single line of almost monotone 
music : 

It was good enough for mother and it's good 

enough for me! 
It was good in the fiery furnace and it's good 

enough for me! 

Thus it went on, with never-wearying iteration, 
and each time with the refrain, more and more 
rhythmic and swaying: 

The old-time religion, 
The old-time religion. 
The old-time religion — 
It's good enough for me! 

That it was good for the Hebrew children, that 
it was good for Paul and Silas, that it will help 
you when you're dying, that it will show the way 
to heaven — all these and still other lines were 
sung, with a sort of wailing softness, a curious 
monotone, a depth of earnestness. And the man 
who had worked this miracle of control by evoking 
out of the past his memory of a meeting with two 
of the vanished great ones of the earth, stood be- 
fore his people, leading them, singing with them, 

104 



ORATOR AND PREACHER 

his eyes aglow with an inward light. His magic 
had suddenly set them into the spirit of the old 
camp-meeting days, the days of pioneering and 
hardship, when religion meant so much to every- 
body, and even those who knew nothing of such 
things felt them, even if but vaguely. Every 
heart was moved and touched, and that old tune 
will sing in the memory of all who thus heard it 
and sung it as long as they live. 



GIFT FOR INSPIRING OTHERS 

THE constant earnestness of Conwell, his desire 
to let no chance slip by of helping a fellow- 
man, puts often into his voice, when he preaches, 
a note of eagerness, of anxiety. But when he 
prays, when he turns to God, his manner under- 
goes a subtle and unconscious change. A load 
has slipped off his shoulders and has been assumed 
by a higher power. Into his bearing, dignified 
though it was, there comes an unconscious in- 
crease of the dignity. Into his voice, firm as it 
was before, there comes a deeper note of firmness. 
He is apt to fling his arms widespread as he prays, 
in a fine gesture that he never uses at other times, 
and he looks upward with the dignity of a man 
who, talking to a higher being, is proud of being 
a friend and confidant. One does not need to be 
a Christian to appreciate the beauty and fineness 
of Conwell's prayers. 

He is likely at any time to do the unexpected, 
and he is so great a man and has such control 
that whatever he does seems to everybody a per- 

106 



INSPIRING OTHERS 

fectly natural thing. His sincerity is so evident, 
and whatever he does is done so simply and natu- 
rally, that it is just a matter of course. 

I remember, during one church service, while 
the singing was going on, that he suddenly rose 
from his chair and, kneeling beside it, on the open 
pulpit, with his back to the congregation, remained 
in that posture for several minutes. No one 
thought it strange. I was likely enough the only 
one who noticed it. His people are used to his 
sincerities. And this time it was merely that he 
had a few words to say quietly to God and turned 
aside for a few moments to say them. 

His earnestness of belief in prayer makes him 
a firm believer in answers to prayer, and, in fact, 
to what may be termed the direct interposition of 
Providence. Doubtless the mystic strain inherited 
from his mother has also much to do with this. 
He has a typically homely way of expressing it 
by one of his favorite maxims, one that he loves 
to repeat encouragingly to friends who are in 
difficulties themselves or who know of the difficul- 
ties that are his; and this heartening maxim is, 
" Trust in God and do the next thing." 

At one time in the early days of his church 
work in Philadelphia a payment of a thousand 
dollars was absolutely needed to prevent a law- 
suit in regard to a debt for the church organ. 
In fact, it was worse than a debt; it was a note 
signed by himself personally, that had become 
due — he was always ready to assume personal 

107 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

liability for debts of his church — and failure to 
meet the note would mean a measure of disgrace 
as well as marked church discouragement. 

He had tried all the sources that seemed open 
to him, but in vain. He could not openly appeal 
to the church members, in this case, for it was 
in the early days of his pastorate, and his zeal 
for the organ, his desire and determination to 
have it, as a necessary part of church equipment, 
had outrun the judgment of some of his best 
friends, including that of the deacon who had 
gone to Massachusetts for him. They had urged a 
delay till other expenses were met, and he had 
acted against their advice. 

He had tried such friends as he could, and he 
had tried prayer. But there was no sign of aid, 
whether supernatural or natural. 

And then, literally on the very day on which 
the holder of the note was to begin proceedings 
against him, a check for precisely the needed one 
thousand dollars came to him, by mail, from a 
man in the West — a man who was a total stranger 
to him. It turned out that the man's sister, 
who was one of the Temple membership, had 
written to her brother of Dr. Conwell's work. 
She knew nothing of any special need for money, 
knew nothing whatever of any note or of the 
demand for a thousand dollars; she merely out- 
lined to her brother what Dr. Conwell was accom- 
plishing, and with such enthusiasm that the 
brother at once sent the opportune check. 

108 



INSPIRING OTHERS 

At a later time the sum of ten thousand dollars 
was importunately needed. It was due, payment 
had been promised. It was for some of the con- 
struction work of the Temple University build- 
ings. The last day had come, and Conwell and 
the very few who knew of the emergency were 
in the depths of gloom. It was too large a sum to 
ask the church people to make up, for they were 
not rich and they had already been giving splen- 
didly, of their slender means, for the church and 
then for the university. There was no rich man 
to turn to; the men famous for enormous chari- 
table gifts have never let themselves be interested 
in any of the work of Russell Conwell. It w r ould 
b& unkind and gratuitous to suggest that it has 
been because their names could not be personally 
attached, or because the work is of an unpreten- 
tious kind among unpretentious people; it need 
merely be said that neither they nor their agents 
have cared to aid, except that one of the very 
richest, whose name is the most distinguished in 
the entire world as a giver, did once, in response to 
a strong personal application; give thirty-five hun- 
dred dollars, this being the extent of the associa- 
tion of the wealthy with any of the varied Con- 
well work. 

So when it was absolutely necessary to have 
ten thousand dollars the possibilities of money 
had been exhausted, whether from congregation 
or individuals. 

Russell Conwell, in spite of his superb optimism, 
109 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

is also a man of deep depressions, and this is be- 
cause of the very fire and fervor of his nature, for 
always in such a nature there is a balancing. He 
believes in success; success must come! — success 
is in itself almost a religion with him — success 
for himself and for all the world who will try for 
it ! But there are times when he is sad and doubt- 
ful over some particular possibility. And he in- 
tensely believes in prayer — faith can move moun- 
tains; but always he believes that it is better 
not to wait for the mountains thus to be moved, 
but to go right out and get to work at moving 
them. And once in a while there comes a time 
when the mountain looms too threatening, even 
after the bravest efforts and the deepest trust. 
Such a time had come — the ten-thousand-dollar 
debt was a looming mountain that he had tried 
in vain to move. He could still pray, and he did, 
but it was one of the times when he could only 
think that something had gone wrong. 

The dean of the university, who has been 
closely in touch with all his work for many years, 
told me of how, in a discouragement which was 
the more notable through contrast with his usual 
unfailing courage, he left the executive offices 
for his home, a couple of blocks away. 

"He went away with everything looking dark 
before him. It was Christmas-time, but the very 
fact of its being Christmas only added to his 
depression — Christmas was such an unnatural 
time for unhappiness! But in a few minutes he 

no 



INSPIRING OTHERS 

came flying back, radiant, overjoyed, sparkling 
with happiness, waving a slip of paper in his hand 
which was a check for precisely ten thousand 
dollars! For he had just drawn it out of an en- 
velope handed to him, as he reached home, by 
the mail-carrier. 

"And it had come so strangely and so naturally! 
For the check was from a woman who was pro- 
foundly interested in his work, and who had sent 
the check knowing that in a general way it was 
needed, but without the least idea that there 
was any immediate need. That was eight or nine 
years ago, but although the donor was told at 
the time that Dr. Conwell and all of us were 
most grateful for the gift, it was not until very 
recently that she was told how opportune it was. 
And the change it made in Dr. Conwell! He is 
a great man for maxims, and all of us who are 
associated with him know that one of his favorites 
is that 'It will all come out right some time!' 
And of course we had a rare opportunity to tell 
him that he ought never to be discouraged. And 
it is so seldom that he is!" 

When the big new church was building the mem- 
bers of the church were vaguely disturbed by 
noticing, when the structure reached the second 
story, that at that height, on the side toward the 
vacant and unbought land adjoining, there were 
several doors built that opened literally into 
nothing but space! 

When asked about these doors and their purpose, 
in 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

Dr. Conwell would make some casual reply, gen- 
erally to the effect that they might be excellent 
as fire-escapes. To no one, for quite a while, did he 
broach even a hint of the great plan that was 
seething in his mind, which was that the buildings 
of a university were some day to stand on that 
land immediately adjoining the church! 

At that time the university, the Temple Uni- 
versity as it is now called, was not even a college, 
although it was probably called a college. Con- 
well had organized it, and it consisted of a number 
of classes and teachers, meeting in highly inade- 
quate quarters in two little houses. But the 
imagination of Conwell early pictured great new 
buildings with accommodations for thousands ! In 
time the dream was realized, the imagination be- 
came a fact, and now those second-floor doors 
actually open from the Temple Church into the 
Temple University! 

You see, he always thinks big! He dreams big 
dreams and wins big success. All his life he has 
talked and preached success, and it is a real and 
very practical belief with him that it is just as 
easy to do a large thing as a small one, and, in 
fact, a little easier ! And so he naturally does not 
see why one should be satisfied with the small 
things of life. "If your rooms are big the people 
will come and fill them," he likes to say. The 
same effort that wins a small success would, 
rightly directed, have won a great success. "Think 
big things and then do them!" 

112 



INSPIRING OTHERS 

Most favorite of all maxims with this man of 
maxims, is "Let Patience have her perfect work." 
Over and over he loves to say it, and his friends 
laugh about his love for it, and he knows that they 
do and laughs about it himself. "I tire them all," 
he says, "for they hear me say it every day." 

But he says it every day because it means so 
much to him. It stands, in his mind, as a constant 
warning against anger or impatience or over-haste 
— faults to which his impetuous temperament is 
prone, though few have ever seen him either 
angry or impatient or hasty, so well does he exer- 
cise self-control. Those who have long known 
him well have said to me that they have never 
heard him censure any one; that his forbearance 
and kindness are wonderful. 

He is a sensitive man beneath his composure; 
he has suffered, and keenly, when he has been 
unjustly attacked; he feels pain of that sort for 
a long time, too, for even the passing of years 
does not entirely deaden it. 

"When I have been hurt, or when I have talked 
with annoying cranks, I have tried to let Patience 
have her perfect work, for those very people, if 
you have patience with them, may afterward be 
of help." 

And he went on to talk a little of his early 
years in Philadelphia, and he said, with sadness, 
that it had pained him to meet with opposition, 
and that it had even come from ministers of his 
own denomination, for he had been so misunder- 

113 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

stood and misjudged; but, he added, the momen- 
tary somberness lifting, even his bitter enemies 
had been won over with patience. 

I could understand a good deal of what he 
meant, for one of the Baptist ministers of Phila- 
delphia had said to me, with some shame, that 
at first it used actually to be the case that when 
Dr. Conwell would enter one of the regular min- 
isters' meetings, all would hold aloof, not a single 
one stepping forward to meet or greet him. 

1 'And it was all through our jealousy of his 
success," said the minister, vehemently. "He 
came to this city a stranger, and he won instant 
popularity, and we couldn't stand it, and so we 
pounced upon things that he did that were alto- 
gether unimportant. The rest of us were so jeal- 
ous of his winning throngs that we couldn't see 
the good in him. And it hurt Dr. Conwell so 
much that for ten years he did not come to our 
conferences. But all this was changed long ago. 
Now no minister is so welcomed as he is, and I 
don't believe that there ever has been a single 
time since he started coming again that he hasn't 
been asked to say something to us. We got over 
our jealousy long ago and we all love him." 

Nor is it only that the clergymen of his own 
denomination admire him, for not long ago, 
such having been Dr. Conwell's triumph in the 
city of his adoption, the rector of the most power- 
ful and aristocratic church in Philadelphia vol- 
untarily paid lofty tribute to his aims and ability, 

114 



INSPIRING OTHERS 

his work and his personal worth. "He is an in- 
spiration to his brothers in the ministry of Jesus 
Christ," so this Episcopalian rector wrote. "He 
is a friend to all that is good, a foe to all that is 
evil, a strength to the weak, a comforter to the 
sorrowing, a man of God. These words come from 
the heart of one who loves, honors, and reverences 
him for his character and his deeds." 

Dr. Conwell did some beautiful and unusual 
things in his church, instituted some beautiful and 
unusual customs, and one can see how narrow and 
hast}' criticisms charged him, long ago, with sen- 
sationalism — charges long since forgotten except 
through the hurt still felt by Dr. Conwell himself. 
"They used to charge me with making a circus 
of the church — as if it were possible for me to 
make a circus of the church!" And his tone was 
one of grieved amazement after all these years. 

But he was original and he was popular, and 
therefore there were misunderstanding and jeal- 
ousy. His Easter services, for example, years 
ago, became widely talked of and eagerly antici- 
pated because each sermon would be wrought 
around some fine symbol; and he would hold in 
his hand, in the pulpit, the blue robin's egg, or 
the white dove, or the stem of lilies, or whatever 
he had chosen as the particular symbol for the 
particular sermon, and that symbol would give 
him the central thought for his discourse, accented 
as it would be by the actual symbol itself in view 
of the congregation. The cross lighted by elec- 

115 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

tricity, to shine down over the baptismal pool, the 
little stream of water cascading gently down the 
steps of the pool during the baptismal rite, the 
roses floating in the pool and his gift of one of them 
to each of the baptized as he or she left the water — 
all such things did seem, long ago, so unconven- 
tional. Yet his own people recognized the beauty 
and poetry of them, and thousands of Bibles in 
Philadelphia have a baptismal rose from Dr. 
Conwell pressed within the pages. 

His constant individuality of mind, his constant 
freshness, alertness, brilliancy, warmth, sympathy, 
endear him to his congregation, and when he 
returns from an absence they bubble and effervesce 
over him as if he were some brilliant new preacher 
just come to them. He is always new to them. 
Were it not that he possesses some remarkable 
quality of charm he would long ago have become, 
so to speak, an old story, but instead of that he 
is to them an always new story, an always enter- 
taining and delightful story, after all these years. 

It is not only that they still throng to hear 
him either preach or lecture, though that itself 
would be noticeable, but it is the delightful and 
delighted spirit with which they do it. Just the 
other evening I heard him lecture in his own 
church, just after his return from an absence, 
and every face beamed happily up at him to wel- 
come him back, and every one listened as intently 
to his every word as if he had never been heard 
there before; and when the lecture was over a 

Ji6 



INSPIRING OTHERS 

huge bouquet of«flowers was handed up to him, and 
some one embarrassedly said a few words about 
its being because he was home again. It was 
all as if he had just returned from an absence of 
months — and he had been away just five and a 
half days ! 



* 



VI 

MILLIONS OF HEARERS 

THAT Conwell is not primarily a minister — 
that he is a minister because he is a sincere 
Christian, but that he is first of all an Abou Ben 
Adhem, a man who loves his fellow-men, becomes 
more and more apparent as the scope of his life- 
work is recognized. One almost comes to think 
that his pastorate of a great church is even a 
minor matter beside the combined importance of 
his educational work, his lecture work, his hospital 
work, his work in general as a helper to those who 
need help. 

For my own part, I should say that he is like 
some of the old-time prophets, the strong ones 
who found a great deal to attend to in addition 
to matters of religion. The power, the ruggedness, 
the physical and mental strength, the positive 
grandeur of the man — all these are like the gen- 
eral conceptions of the big Old Testament proph- 
ets. The suggestion is given only because it has 
often recurred, and therefore with the feeling that 
there is something more than fanciful in the com- 

118 



MILLIONS OF HEARERS 

parison; and yet, after all, the comparison fails 
in one important particular, for none of the 
prophets seems to have had a sense of humor! 

It is perhaps better and more accurate to de- 
scribe him as the last of the old school of American 
philosophers, the last of those sturdy-bodied, high- 
thinking, achieving men who, in the old days, 
did their best to set American humanity in the 
right path — such men as Emerson, Alcott, Gough, 
Wendell Phillips, Garrison, Bayard Taylor, 
Beecher; men whom Con well knew and admired 
in the long ago, and all of whom have long since 
passed away. 

And Conwell, in his going up and down the 
country, inspiring his thousands and thousands, 
is the survivor of that old-time group who used 
to travel about, dispensing wit and wisdom and 
philosophy and courage to the crowded benches 
of country lyceums, and the chairs of school-houses 
and town halls, or the larger and more pretentious 
gathering-places of the cities. 

Conwell himself is amused to remember that 
he wanted to talk in public from his boyhood, 
and that very early he began to yield to the in- 
born impulse. He laughs as he remembers the 
variety of country fairs and school commence- 
ments and anniversaries and even sewing-circles 
where he tried his youthful powers, and all for ex- 
perience alone, in the first few years, except pos- 
sibly for such a thing as a ham or a jack-knife! 
The first money that he ever received for speaking 

9 119 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

was, so he remembers with glee, seventy-five cents ; 
and even that was not for his talk, but for horse 
hire! But at the same time there is more than 
amusement in recalling these experiences, for he 
knows that they were invaluable to him as train- 
ing. And for over half a century he has affection- 
ately remembered John B. Gough, who, in the 
height of his own power and success, saw resolu- 
tion and possibilities in the ardent young hill-man, 
and actually did him the kindness and the honor 
of introducing him to an audience in one of the 
Massachusetts towns; and it was really a great 
kindness and a great honor, from a man who had 
won his fame to a young man just beginning an 
oratorical career. 

Conwell's lecturing has been, considering every- 
thing, the most important work of his life, for by 
it he has come into close touch with so many 
millions — literally millions! — of people. 

I asked him once if he had any idea how 
many he had talked to in the course of his career, 
and he tried to estimate how many thousands 
of times he had lectured, and the average attend- 
ance for each, but desisted when he saw that it 
ran into millions of hearers. What a marvel is 
such a fact as that! Millions of hearers! 

I asked the same question of his private secre- 
tary, and found that no one had ever kept any sort 
of record; but as careful an estimate as could be 
made gave a conservative result of fully eight 
million hearers for his lectures; and adding the 

120 



MILLIONS OF HEARERS 

number to whom he has preached, who have been 
over five million, there is a total of well over thir- 
teen million who have listened to Russell Con- 
well's voice! And this staggering total is, if any- 
thing, an underestimate. The figuring was done 
cautiously and was based upon such facts as that 
he now addresses an average of over forty-five 
hundred at his Sunday services (an average that 
would be higher were it not that his sermons in 
vacation time are usually delivered in little 
churches; when at home, at the Temple, he ad- 
dresses three meetings every Sunday), and that 
he lectures throughout the entire course of each 
year, including six nights a week of lecturing dur- 
ing vacation-time. What a power is wielded by 
a man who has held over thirteen million people 
under the spell of his voice! Probably no other 
man who ever lived had such a total of hearers. 
And the total is steadily mounting, for he is a man 
who has never known the meaning of rest. 

I think it almost certain that Dr. Conwell has 
never spoken to any one of what, to me, is the 
finest point of his lecture-work, and that is that 
he still goes gladly and for small fees to the small 
towns that are never visited by other men of great 
reputation. He knows that it is the little places, 
the out-of-the-way places, the submerged places, 
that most need a pleasure and a stimulus, and he 
still goes out, man of well over seventy that he is, 
to tiny towns in distant states, heedless of the 
discomforts of traveling, of the poor little hotels 

121 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

that seldom have visitors, of the oftentimes hope- 
less cooking and the uncleanliness, of the hard- 
ships and the discomforts, of the un ventilated 
and overheated or underheated halls. He does 
not think of claiming the relaxation earned by a 
lifetime of labor, or, if he ever does, the thought 
of the sword of John Ring restores instantly his 
fervid earnestness. 

How he does it, how he can possibly keep it up, 
is the greatest marvel of all. I have before me a 
list of his engagements for the summer weeks of 
this year, 191 5, and I shall set it down because 
it will specifically show, far more clearly than 
general statements, the kind of work he does. 
The list is the itinerary of his vacation. Vacation ! 
Lecturing every evening but Sunday, and on 
Sundays preaching in the town where he happens 
to be! 



June 24 


Ackley, la. July 11 


♦Brookings, S. D. 


u 


25 


Waterloo, la. 


1 12 


Pipestone, Minn. 


u 


26 


Decorah, la. 


' 13 


Hawarden, la. 


II 


27 


*Waukon, la. 


' 14 


Canton, S. D. 


II 


28 


Red Wing, Minn. 


' 15 


Cherokee, la. 


II 


29 


River Falls, Wis. 


1 16 


Pocahontas, la. 


It 


30 


Northfield, Minn. 


' 17 


Glidden, la. 


July 


1 


Faribault, Minn. 


1 18 


*Boone, la. 


" it 


2 


Spring Valley, Minn. 


* 19 


Dexter, la. 


11 


3 


Blue Earth, Minn. 


• 20 


Indianola, la. 


11 


4 


*Fairmount, Minn. 


1 21 


Corydon, la. 


11 


5 


Lake Crystal, Minn. 


1 22 


Essex, la. 


11 


6 


Redwood Falls, 


' 23 


Sidney, la. 






Minn. 


• 24 


Falls City, Nebr. 


11 


7 


Willmer, Minn. 


' 25 


*Hiawatha, Kan. 


11 


8 


Dawson, Minn. 


4 26 


Frankfort, Kan. 


it 


9 


Redfield, S. D. 


' 27 


Greenleaf, Kan. 


11 


10 


Huron, S. D. 


' 28 


Osborne, Kan. 



122 



MILLIONS OF HEARERS 

July 29 Stockton, Kan. Aug. 14 Honesdale, Pa. 

" 30 Phillipsburg, Kan. " 15 *Honesdale, Pa. 

11 31 Mankato, Kan. " 16 Carbondale, Pa. 

En route to next date on " 17 Montrose, Pa. 

circuit. " 18 Tunkhannock, Pa. 

Aug. 3 Westfield, Pa. " 19 Nanticoke, Pa. 

4 Galston, Pa. " 20 Stroudsburg, Pa. 

5 Port Alleghany, Pa. " 21 Newton, N. J. 

6 Wellsville, N. Y. " 22 *Newton, N. J. 

7 Bath, N. Y. "23 Hackettstown, N. J. 

8 *Bath, N. Y. " 24 New Hope, Pa. . 

9 Penn Yan, N. Y. "25 Doylestown, Pa. 

10 Athens, N. Y. " 26 Phcenixville, Pa. 

11 Owego, N. Y. " 27 Kennett, Pa. 

12 Patchogue,L.I.,N.Y. " 28 Oxford, Pa. 

13 Port Jervis, N. Y. "29 *Oxford, Pa. 

* Preach on Sunday. 

And all these hardships, all this traveling and 
lecturing, which would test the endurance of the 
youngest and strongest, this man of over seventy 
assumes without receiving a particle of personal 
gain, for every dollar that he makes by it is given 
away in helping those who need helping. 

That Dr. Conwell is intensely modest is one 
of the curious features of his character. He sin- 
cerely believes that to write his life would be, 
in the main, just to tell what people have done 
for him. He knows and admits that he works 
unweariedly, but in profound sincerity he ascribes 
the success of his plans to those who have seconded 
and assisted him. It is in just this way that he 
looks upon every phase of his life. When he is 
reminded of the devotion of his old soldiers, he 
remembers it only with a sort of pleased wonder 
that they gave the devotion to him, and he quite 
forgets that they loved him because he was always 

123 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

ready to sacrifice ease or risk his own life for 
them. 

He deprecates praise; if any one likes him, the 
liking need not be shown in words, but in helping 
along a good work. That his church has succeeded 
has been because of the devotion of the people; 
that the university has succeeded is because of 
the splendid work of the teachers and pupils ; that 
the hospitals have done so much has been because 
of the noble services of physicians and nurses. 
To him, as he himself expresses it, realizing that 
success has come to his plans, it seems as if the 
realities are but dreams. He is astonished by his 
own success. He thinks mainly of his own short- 
comings. "God and man have ever been very 
patient with me." His depression is at times 
profound when he compares the actual results 
with what he would like them to be, for always 
his hopes have gone soaring far in advance of 
achievement. It is the "Hitch your chariot to 
a star" idea. 

His modesty goes hand-in-hand with kindliness, 
and I have seen him let himself be introduced in 
his own church to his congregation, when he is 
going to deliver a lecture there, just because a 
former pupil of the university was present who, 
Conwell knew, was ambitious to say something 
inside of the Temple walls, and this seemed to 
be the only opportunity. 

I have noticed, when he travels, that the face 
of the newsboy brightens as he buys a paper from 

124 



MILLIONS OF HEARERS 

him, that the porter is all happiness, that con- 
ductor and brakeman are devotedly anxious to 
be of aid. Everywhere the man wins love. He 
loves humanity and humanity responds to the love. 

He has always won the affection of those who 
knew him, and Bayard Taylor was one of the 
many; he and Bayard Taylor loved each other for 
long acquaintance and fellow experiences as world- 
wide travelers, back in the years when com- 
paratively few Americans visited the Nile and the 
Orient, or even Europe. 

When Taylor died there was a memorial service 
in Boston at which Conwell was asked to preside, 
and, as he wished for something more than ad- 
dresses, he went to Longfellow and asked him to 
write and read a poem for the occasion. Long- 
fellow had not thought of writing anything, and 
he was too ill to be present at the services, but, 
there always being something contagiously in- 
spiring about Russell Conwell when he wishes 
something to be done, the poet promised to do 
what he could. And he wrote and sent the beau- 
tiful lines beginning: 

Dead he lay among his books, 
The peace of God was in his looks. 

Many men of letters, including Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, were present at the services, and Dr. 
Conwell induced Oliver Wendell Holmes to read 
the lines, and they were listened to amid profound 
silence, to their fine ending. 

125 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

Con well, in spite of his widespread hold on 
millions of people, has never won fame, recogni- 
tion, general renown, compared with many men 
of minor achievements. This seems like an im- 
possibility. Yet it is not an impossibility, but a 
fact. Great numbers of men of education and 
culture are entirely ignorant of him and his work 
in the world — men, these, who deem themselves 
in touch with world-affairs and with the ones who 
make and move the world. It is inexplicable, this, 
except that never was there a man more devoid 
of the faculty of self-exploitation, self-advertising, 
than Russell Conwell. Nor, in the mere reading 
of them, do his words appeal with anything like 
the force of the same words uttered by himself, 
for always, with his spoken words, is his personal- 
ity. Those who have heard Russell Conwell, or 
have known him personally, recognize the charm 
of the man and his immense f orcefulness ; but 
there are many, and among them those who con- 
trol publicity through books and newspapers, 
who, though they ought to be the warmest in their 
enthusiasm, have never felt drawn to hear him, 
and, if they know of him at all, think of him as 
one who pleases in a simple way the commoner 
folk, forgetting in their pride that every really 
great man pleases the common ones, and that 
simplicity and directness are attributes of real 
greatness. 

But Russell Conwell has always won the admira- 
tion of the really great, as well as of the humbler 

X26 



MILLIONS OF HEARERS 

millions. It is only a supposedly cultured class 
in between that is not thoroughly acquainted with 
what he has done. 

Perhaps, too, this is owing to his having cast 
in his lot with the city, of all cities, which, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, looks most closely to 
family and place of residence as criterions of 
merit — a city with which it is almost impossible 
for a stranger to become affiliated — or aphiladel- 
phiated, as it might be expressed — and Phila- 
delphia, in spite of all that Dr. Conwell has 
done, has been under the thrall of the fact that 
he went north of Market Street — that fatal fact 
understood by all who know Philadelphia — and 
that he made no effort to make friends in Ritten- 
house Square. Such considerations seem absurd 
in this twentieth century, but in Philadelphia 
they are still potent. Tens of thousands of Phila- 
delphians love him, and he is honored by its 
greatest men, but there is a class of the pseudo- 
cultured who do not know him or appreciate him. 
And it needs also to be understood that, outside of 
his own beloved Temple, he would prefer to go 
to a little church or a little hall and to speak to 
the forgotten people, in the hope of encouraging 
and inspiring them and filling them with hopeful 
glow, rather than to speak to the rich and com- 
fortable. 

His dearest hope, so one of the few who are 
close to him told me, is that no one shall come 
into his life without being benefited, He does 

127 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

not say this publicly, nor does he for a moment 
believe that such a hope could be fully realized, 
but it is very dear to his heart; and no man 
spurred by such a hope, and thus bending all 
his thoughts toward the poor, the hard-working, 
the unsuccessful, is in a way to win honor from 
the Scribes; for we have Scribes now quite as 
much as when they were classed with Pharisees. 
It is not the first time in the world's history that 
Scribes have failed to give their recognition to 
one whose work was not among the great and 
wealthy. 

That Conwell himself has seldom taken any 
part whatever in politics except as a good citizen 
standing for good government; that, as he ex- 
presses it, he never held any political office except 
that he was once on a school committee, and also 
that he does not identify himself with the so-called 
"movements" that from time to time catch 
public attention, but aims only and constantly 
at the quiet betterment of mankind, may be 
mentioned as additional reasons why his name and 
fame have not been steadily blazoned. 

He knows and will admit that he works hard 
and has all his life worked hard. "Things keep 
turning my way because I'm on the job," as he 
whimsically expressed it one day; but that is 
about all, -so it seems to him. 

And he sincerely believes that his life has in 
itself been without interest; that it has been an 
essentially commonplace life with nothing of the 

128 



MILLIONS OF HEARERS 

interesting or the eventful to tell. He is frankly 
surprised that there has ever been the desire to 
write about him. He really has no idea of how 
fascinating are the things he has done. His entire 
life has been of positive interest from the variety 
of things accomplished and the unexpectedness 
with which he has accomplished them. 

Never, for example, was there such an organ- 
izer. In fact, organization and leadership have 
always been as the breath of life to him. As a 
youth he organized debating societies and, before 
the war, a local military company. While on 
garrison duty in the Civil War he organized 
what is believed to have been the first free school 
for colored children in the South. One day 
Minneapolis happened to be spoken of, and Con- 
well happened to remember that he organized, 
when he was a lawyer in that city, what became 
the first Y.M.C.A. branch there. Once he even 
started a newspaper. And it was natural that the 
organizing instinct, as years advanced, should 
lead him to greater and greater things, such as 
his church, with the numerous associations formed 
within itself through his influence, and the uni- 
versity — the organizing of the university being 
in itself an achievement of positive romance. 

"A life without interest !" Why, when I hap- 
pened to ask, one day, how many Presidents he 
had known since Lincoln, he replied, quite casually, 
that he had "written the lives of most of them in 
their own homes"; and by this he meant either 

129 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

personally or in collaboration with the American 
biographer Abbott. 

The many-sidedness of Conwell is one of the 
things that is always fascinating. After you have 
quite got the feeling that he is peculiarly a man 
of to-day, lecturing, on to-day's possibilities to v the 
people of to-day, you happen upon some such 
fact as that he attracted the attention of the 
London Times through a lecture on Italian his- 
tory at Cambridge in England; or that on the 
evening of the day on which he was admitted to 
practice in the Supreme Court of the United States 
he gave a lecture in Washington on "The Cur- 
riculum of the Prophets in Ancient Israel." The 
man's life is a succession of delightful surprises. 

An odd trait of his character is his love for fire. 
He could easily have been a veritable fire-wor- 
shiper instead of an orthodox Christian! He 
has always loved a blaze, and he says reminis- 
cently that for no single thing was he punished 
so much when he was a child as for building bon- 
fires. And after securing possession, as he did in 
middle age, of the house where he was born and 
of a great acreage around about, he had one of 
the most enjoyable times of his life in tearing 
down old buildings that needed to be destroyed 
and in heaping up fallen trees and rubbish and in 
piling great heaps of wood and setting the great 
piles ablaze. You see, there is one of the secrets 
of his strength — -he has never lost the capacity for 
fiery enthusiasm! 

130 



MILLIONS OF HEARERS 

Always, too, in these later years he is showing his 
strength and enthusiasm in a positively noble 
way. He has for years been a keen sufferer from 
rheumatism and neuritis, but he has never per- 
mitted this to interfere with his work or plans. 
He makes little of his sufferings, and when he 
slowly makes his way, bent and twisted, down- 
stairs, he does not want to be noticed. "I'm all 
right," he will say if any one offers to help, and at 
such a time comes his nearest approach to 
impatience. He wants his suffering ignored. 
Strength has always been to him so precious a 
belonging that he will not relinquish it while he 
lives. "I'm all right!" And he makes himself 
believe that he is all right even though the pain 
becomes so severe as to demand massage. And 
he will still, even when suffering, talk calmly, or 
write his letters, or attend to whatever matters 
come before him. It is the Spartan boy hiding 
the pain of the gnawing fox. And he never has 
let pain interfere with his presence on the pulpit 
or the platform. He has once in a while gone to 
a meeting on crutches and then, by the force of 
will, and inspired by what he is to do, has stood 
before his audience or congregation, a man full of 
strength and fire and life. 



VII 

HOW A UNIVERSITY WAS FOUNDED 

THE story of the foundation and rise of 
Temple University is an extraordinary story; 
it is not only extraordinary, but inspiring ; it is not 
only inspiring, but full of romance. 

For the university came out of nothing ! — noth- 
ing but the need of a young man and the fact that 
he told the need to one who, throughout his life, 
has felt the impulse to help any one in need 
and has always obeyed the impulse. 

I asked Dr. Con well, up at his home in the 
Berkshires, to tell me himself just how the uni- 
versity began, and he said that it began because 
it was needed and succeeded because of the loyal 
work of the teachers. And when I asked for 
details he was silent for a while, looking off into 
the brooding twilight as it lay over the waters 
and the trees and the hills, and then he said: 

"It was all so simple; it all came about so 
naturally. One evening, after a service, a young 
man of the congregation came to me and I saw 
that he was disturbed about something. I had 

13 2 



FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY 

him sit down by me, and I knew that in a few 
moments he would tell me what was troubling 
him. 

"'Dr. Conwell,' he said, abruptly, 'I earn but 
little money, and I see no immediate chance of 
earning more. I have to support not only myself, 
but my mother. It leaves nothing at all. Yet my 
longing is to be a minister. It is the one ambition 
of my life. Is there anything that I can do?' 

"'Any man,' I said to him, 'with the proper 
determination and ambition can study sufficiently 
at night to win his desire.' 

"'I have tried to think so,' said he, 'but I 
have not been able to see anything clearly. I 
want to study, and am ready to give every spare 
minute to it, but I don't know how to get at it.' 

"I thought a few minutes, as I looked at him. 
He was strong in his desire and in his ambition to 
fulfil it — strong enough, physically and mentally, 
for work of the body and o£ the mind — and he 
needed something more than generalizations of 
sympathy. 

"'Come to me one evening a week and I will 
begin teaching you myself,' I said, 'and at least 
you will in that way make a beginning'; and I 
named the evening. 

"His face brightened and he eagerly said that 
he would come, and left me; but in a little while 
he came hurrying back again. 'May I bring a 
friend with me?' he said. 

"I told him to bring as many as he wanted to, 
i33 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

for more than one would be an advantage, and 
when the evening came there were six friends 
with him. And that first evening I began to teach 
them the foundations of Latin." 

He stopped as if the story was over. He was 
looking out thoughtfully into the waning light, 
and I knew that his mind was busy with those 
days of the beginning of the institution he so 
loves, and whose continued success means so much 
to him. In a little while he went on : 

"That was the beginning of it, and there is 
little more to tell. By the third evening the 
number of pupils had increased to forty; others 
joined in helping me, and a room was hired ; then 
a little house, then a second house. From a few 
students and teachers we became a college. After 
a while our buildings went up on Broad Street 
alongside the Temple Church, and after another 
while we became a university. From the first 
our aim" — (I noticed how quickly it had become 
"our" instead of "my") — "our aim was to give 
education to those who were unable to get it 
through the usual channels. And so that was 
really all there was to it." 

That was typical of Russell Conwell — to tell 
with brevity of what he has done, to point out the 
beginnings of something, and quite omit to elabo- 
rate as to the results. And that, when you come 
to know him, is precisely what he means you to 
understand — that it is the beginning of anything 
that is important, and that if a thing is but 

i34 



FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY 

earnestly begun and set going in the right way 
it may just as easily develop big results as little 
results. 

But his story was very far indeed from being 
"all there was to it," for he had quite omitted 
to state the extraordinary fact that, beginning 
with those seven pupils, coming to his library on an 
evening in 1884, the Temple University has 
numbered, up to Commencement- time , in 191 5, 
88,821 students! Nearly one hundred thousand 
students, and in the lifetime of the founder! 
Really, the magnitude of such a work cannot be 
exaggerated, nor the vast importance of it when 
it is considered that most of these eighty-eight 
thousand students would not have"" received their 
education had it not been for Temple University. 
And it all came from the instant response of 
Russell Conwell to the immediate need presented 
by a young man without money! 

"And there is something else I want to say," 
said Dr. Conwell, unexpectedly. "I want to say, 
more fully than a mere casual word, how nobly 
the work was taken up by volunteer helpers; 
professors from the University of Pennsylvania 
and teachers from the public schools and other 
local institutions gave freely of what time they 
could until the new venture was firmly on its 
way. I honor those who came so devotedly to 
help. And it should be remembered that in those 
early days the need was even greater than it would 
now appear, for there were then no night schools 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

or manual-training schools. Since then the city 
of Philadelphia has gone into such work, and as 
fast as it has taken up certain branches the 
Temple University has put its" energy into the 
branches just higher. And there seems no lessen- 
ing of the need of it," he added, ponderingly. 

No; there is certainly no lessening of the need 
of it ! The figures of the annual catalogue would 
alone show that. 

As early as 1887, 3 us t three years after the 
beginning, the Temple College, as it was by that 
time called, issued its first catalogue, which set 
forth with stirring words that the intent of its 
founding was to: 

"Provide such instruction as shall be best 
adapted to the higher education of those who are 
compelled to labor at their trade while engaged 
in study. 

"Cultivate a taste for the higher and most 
useful branches of learning. 

" Awaken in the character of young laboring 
men and women a determined ambition to be 
useful to their fellow-men." 

The college — -the university as it in time came 
to be — early broadened its scope, but it has from 
the first continued to aim at the needs of those 
unable to secure education without such help as, 
through its methods, it affords. 

It was chartered in 1888, at which time its 
numbers had reached almost six hundred, and it 
has ever since had a constant flood of applicants. 

136 



FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY 

"It has demonstrated," as Dr. Conwell puts it, 
"that those who work for a living have time for 
study." And he, though he does not himself 
add this, has given the opportunity. 

He feels especial pride in the features by which 
lectures and recitations are held at practically 
any hour which best suits the convenience of the 
students. If any ten students join in a request 
for any hour from nine in the morning to ten 
at night a class is arranged for them, to meet that 
request! This involves the necessity for a much 
larger number of professors and teachers than 
would otherwise be necessary, but that is deemed 
a slight consideration in comparison with the im- 
mense good done by meeting the needs of workers. 

Also President Conwell — for of course he is the 
president of the university — is proud of the fact 
that the privilege of graduation depends entirely 
upon knowledge gained ; that graduation does not 
depend upon having listened to any set number 
of lectures or upon having attended for so many 
terms or years. If a student can do four years* 
work in two years or in three he is encouraged 
to do it, and if he cannot even do it in four he can 
have no diploma. 

Obviously, there is no place at Temple Uni- 
versity for students who care only for a few years 
of leisured ease. It is a place for workers, and 
not at all for those who merely wish to be able to 
boast that they attended a university. The stu- 
dents have come largely from among railroad 

J 37 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

clerks, bank clerks, bookkeepers, teachers, preach- 
ers, mechanics, salesmen, drug clerks, city and 
United States government employees, widows, 
nurses, housekeepers, brakemen, firemen, engi- 
neers, motormen, conductors, and shop hands. 

It was when the college became strong enough, 
and sufficiently advanced in scholarship and 
standing, and broad enough in scope, to win the 
name of university that this title was officially 
granted to it by the State of Pennsylvania, in 
1907, and now its educational plan includes three 
distinct school systems. 

First: it offers a high-school education to the 
student who has to quit school after leaving the 
grammar-school. 

Second: it offers a full college education, with 
the branches taught in long-established high- 
grade colleges, to the student who has to quit 
on leaving the high-school. 

Third: it offers further scientific or professional 
education to the college graduate who must go 
to work immediately on quitting college, but who 
wishes to take up some such course as law or 
medicine or engineering. 

Out of last year's enrolment of 3,654 it is SP 
teresting to notice that the law claimed 141; 
theology, 182; medicine and pharmacy and den- 
tistry combined, 357; civil engineering, 37; also 
that the teachers' college, with normal courses 
on such subjects as household arts and science, 
kindergarten work, and physical education, took 

138 



FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY 

174; and still more interesting, in a way, to see 
that 269 students were enrolled for the technical 
and vocational courses, such as cooking and dress- 
making, millinery, manual crafts, school-garden- 
ing, and story-telling. There were 511 in high- 
school work, and 243 in elementary education. 
There were 79 studying music, and 68 studying to 
be trained nurses. There were 606 in the college 
of liberal arts and sciences, and in the department 
of commercial education there were 987 — for it is 
a university that offers both scholarship and prac- 
ticality. 

Temple University is not in the least a charitable 
institution. Its fees are low, and its hours are 
for the convenience of the students themselves, 
but it is a place of absolute independence. It is, 
indeed, a place of far greater independence, so one 
of the professors pointed out, than are the great 
universities which receive millions and millions 
of money in private gifts and endowments. 

Temple University in its early years was sorely 
in need of money, and often there were thrills of 
expectancy when some man of mighty wealth 
seemed on the point of giving. But not a single 
one ever did, and now the Temple likes to feel 
that it is glad of it. The Temple, to quote its 
own words, is "An institution for strong men 
and women who can labor with both mind and 
body." 

And the management is proud to be able to 
say that, although great numbers have come from 

139 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

distant places, "not one of the many thousands 
ever failed to find an opportunity to support 
himself." 

Even in the early days, when money was needed 
for the necessary buildings (the buildings of which 
Conwell dreamed when he left second-story doors 
in his church!), the university — college it was then 
called — had won devotion from those who knew 
that it was a place where neither time nor money 
was wasted, and where idleness was a crime, and in 
the donations for the work were many such items 
as four hundred dollars from factory-workers 
who gave fifty cents each, and two thousand dol- 
lars from policemen who gave a dollar each. 
Within two or three years past the State of Penn- 
sylvania has begun giving it a large sum annually, 
and this state aid is public recognition of Temple 
University as an institution of high public value. 
The state money is invested in the brains and 
hearts of the ambitious. 

So eager is Dr. Conwell to place the opportunity 
of education before every one, that even his ser- 
vants must go to school! He is not one of those 
who can see needs that are far away but not 
those that are right at home. His belief in edu- 
cation, and in the highest attainable education, is 
profound, and it is not only on account of the 
abstract pleasure and value of education, but its 
power of increasing actual earning power and thus 
making a worker of more value to both himself 
and the community. 

140 



FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY 

Many a man and many a woman, while con- 
tinuing to work for some firm or factory, has taken 
Temple technical courses and thus fitted himself 
or herself for an advanced position with the 
same employer. The Temple knows of many 
such, who have thus won prominent advancement. 
And it knows of teachers who, while continuing 
to teach, have fitted themselves through the Tem- 
ple courses for professorships. And it knows 
of many a case of the rise of a Temple student 
that reads like an Arabian Nights' fancy! — of 
advance from bookkeeper to editor, from office- 
boy to bank president, from kitchen maid to 
school principal, from street-cleaner to mayor! 
The Temple University helps them that help 
themselves. 

President Conwell told me personally of one 
case that especially interested him because it 
seemed to exhibit, in especial degree, the Temple 
possibilities; and it particularly interested me 
because it also showed, in high degree, the 
methods and personality of Dr. Conwell himself. 

One day a young woman came to him and 
said she earned only three dollars a week and that 
she desired very much to make more. "Can you 
tell me how to do it?" she said. 

He liked her ambition and her directness, but 
there was something that he felt doubtful about, 
and that was that her hat looked too expensive 
for three dollars a week ! 

Now Dr. Conwell is a man whom you would 
141 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

never suspect of giving a thought to the hat of 
man or woman ! But as a matter of fact there is 
very little that he does not see. 

But though the hat seemed too expensive for 
three dollars a week, Dr. Conwell is not a man 
who makes snap-judgments harshly, and in par- 
ticular he would be the last man to turn away 
hastily one who had sought him out for help. 
He never felt, nor could possibly urge upon any 
one, contentment with a humble lot; he stands 
for advancement; he has no sympathy with that 
dictum of the smug, that has come to us from a na- 
tion tight bound for centuries by its gentry and 
aristocracy, about being contented with the posi- 
tion in which God has placed you, for he points 
out that the Bible itself holds up advancement 
and success as things desirable. 

And, as to the young woman before him, it 
developed, through discreet inquiry veiled by 
frank discussion of her case, that she had made 
the expensive-looking hat herself! Whereupon 
not only did all doubtfulness and hesitation van- 
ish, but he saw at once how she could better herself. 
He knew that a woman who could make a hat 
like that for herself could make hats for other 
people, and so, "Go into millinery as a business, " 
he advised. 

"Oh— if I only could!" she exclaimed. "But 
I know that I don't know enough." 

"Take the millinery course in Temple Univer- 
sity," he responded. 

142 



FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY 

She had not even heard of such a course, and 
when he went on to explain how she could take 
it and at the same time continue at her present 
work until the course was concluded, she was 
positively ecstatic — it was all so unexpected, this 
opening of the view of a new and broader life. 

"She was an unusual woman," concluded Dr. 
Con well, "and she worked with enthusiasm and 
tirelessness. She graduated, went to an up-state 
city that seemed to offer a good field, opened a 
millinery establishment there, with her own name 
above the door, and became prosperous. That # 
was only a few years ago. And recently I had a 
letter from her, telling me that last year she 
netted a clear profit of three thousand six hundred 
dollars!" 

I remember a man, himself of distinguished 
position, saying of Dr. Conwell, "It is difficult 
to speak in tempered language of what he has 
achieved." And that just expresses it; the temp- 
tation is constantly to use superlatives — for su- 
perlatives fit! Of course he has succeeded for 
himself, and succeeded marvelously, in his rise 
from the rocky hill farm, but he has done so vastly 
more than that in inspiring such hosts of others 
to succeed ! 

A dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions — 
and what realizations have come! And it inter- 
ested me profoundly not long ago, when Dr. 
Conwell, talking of the university, unexpectedly 
remarked that he would like to see such institu- 

H3 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

tions scattered throughout every state in the 
Union. "All carried on at slight expense to the 
students and at hours to suit all sorts of working 
men and women," he added, after a pause; and 
then, abruptly, "I should like to see the possi- 
bility of higher education offered to every one in 
the United States who works for a living.' ' 

There was something superb in the very imagin- 
ing of such a nation-wide system. But I did not 
ask whether or not he had planned any details 
for such an effort. I knew that thus far it might 
only be one of his dreams — -but I also knew that 
his dreams had a way of becoming realities. 
I had a fleeting glimpse of his soaring vision. It 
was amazing to find a man of more than three- 
score and ten thus dreaming of more worlds to 
conquer. And I thought, what could the world 
have accomplished if Methuselah had been a Con- 
well!— or, far better, what wonders could be 
accomplished if Con well could but be a Methuse- 
lah! 

He has all his life been a great traveler. He is 
a man who sees vividly and who can describe 
vividly. Yet often his letters, even from places of 
the most profound interest, are mostly concerned 
with affairs back home. It is not that he does 
not feel, and feel intensely, the interest of what 
he is visiting, but that his tremendous earnestness 
keeps him always concerned about his work at 
home. There could be no stronger example than 
what I noticed in a letter he wrote from Jerusa- 

144 



FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY 

lem. "I am in Jerusalem! And here at Geth- 
semane and at the Tomb of Christ" — reading thus 
far, one expects that any man, and especially a 
minister, is sure to say something regarding the 
associations of the place and the effect of these 
associations on his mind; but Con well is always 
the man who is different— "And here at Gethsem- 
ane and at the Tomb of Christ, I pray especially for 
the Temple University. " That is Conwellism ! 

That he founded a hospital — a work in itself 
great enough for even a great life — is but one 
among the striking incidents of his career. And 
it came about through perfect naturalness. For 
he came to know, through his pastoral work and 
through his growing acquaintance with the needs 
of the city, that there was a vast amount of suf- 
fering and wretchedness and anguish, because 
of the inability of the existing hospitals to care 
for all who needed care. There was so much 
sickness and suffering to be alleviated, there were 
so many deaths that could be prevented — and so 
he decided to start another hospital. 

And, like everything with him, the beginning 
was small. That cannot too strongly be set down 
as the way of this phenomenally successful organ- 
izer. Most men would have to wait until a big 
beginning could be made, and so would most likely 
never make a beginning at all. But Con well's 
way is to dream of future bigness, but be ready to 
begin at once, no matter how small or insignificant 
the beginning may appear to others. 

i45 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

Two rented rooms, one nurse, one patient — this 
was the humble beginning, in 1891, of what has 
developed into the great Samaritan Hospital. In 
a year there was an entire house, fitted up with 
wards and operating-room. Now it occupies sev- 
eral buildings, including and adjoining that first 
one, and a great new structure is planned. But 
even as it is, it has a hundred and seventy beds, 
is fitted with all modern hospital appliances, and 
has a large staff of physicians; and the number 
of surgical operations performed there is very 
large. 

It is open to sufferers of any race or creed, and 
the poor are never refused admission, the rule 
being that treatment is free for those who cannot 
pay, but that such as can afford it shall pay ac- 
cording to their means. 

And the hospital has a kindly feature that 
endears it to patients and their relatives alike, and 
that is that, by Dr. Conwell's personal order, there 
are not only the usual week-day hours for visiting, 
but also one evening a week and every Sunday 
afternoon. 'Tor otherwise," as he says, "many 
would be unable to come because they could not 
get away from their work." 

A little over eight years ago another hospital 
was taken in charge, the Garretson — not founded 
by Conwell, this one, but acquired, and promptly 
expanded in its usefulness. 

Both the Samaritan and the Garretson are part 
of Temple University. The Samaritan Hospital 

146 



FOUNDING A UNIVERSITY 

has treated, since its foundation, up to the middle 
of 1915, 29,301 patients; the Garretson, in its 
shorter life, 5,923. Including dispensary cases as 
well as house patients, the two hospitals together, 
under the headship of President Conwell, have 
handled over 400,000 cases. 

How Conwell can possibly meet the multifari- 
ous demands upon his time is in itself a miracle. 
He is the head of the great church; he is the head 
of the university; he is the head of the hospitals; 
he is the head of everything with which he is 
associated! And he is not only nominally, but 
very actively, the head! 



VIII 

HIS SPLENDID EFFICIENCY 

CON WELL has a few strong and efficient execu- 
tive helpers who have long been associated 
with him; men and women who know his ideas 
and ideals, who are devoted to him, and who do 
their utmost to relieve him; and of course there 
is very much that is thus done for him; but even 
as it is, he is so overshadowing a man (there is 
really no other word) that all who work with him 
look to him for advice and guidance — the profess- 
ors and the students, the doctors and the nurses, 
the church officers, the Sunday-school teachers, 
the members of his congregation. And he is never 
too busy to see any one who really wishes to see 
him. 

He can attend to a vast intricacy of detail, and 
answer myriad personal questions and doubts, 
and keep the great institutions splendidly going, 
by thorough systematization of time, and by watch- 
ing every minute. He has several secretaries, for 
special work, besides his private secretary. His 
correspondence is very great. Often he dictates 

148 



SPLENDID EFFICIENCY 

to a secretary as he travels on the train. Even in 
the few days for which he can run back to the 
Berkshires, work is awaiting him. Work follows 
him. And after knowing of this, one is positively 
amazed that he is able to give to his country- wide 
lectures the time and the traveling that they in- 
exorably demand. Only a man of immense 
strength, of the greatest stamina, a veritable 
superman, could possibly do it. And at times 
one quite forgets, noticing the multiplicity of his 
occupations, that he prepares two sermons and 
two talks on Sunday! 

Here is his usual Sunday schedule, when at 
home. He rises at seven and studies until break- 
fast, which is at eight-thirty. Then he studies un- 
til nine-forty-five, when he leads a men's meeting 
at which he is likely also to play the organ and 
lead the singing. At ten-thirty is the principal 
church service, at which he preaches, and at the 
close of which he shakes hands with hundreds. 
He dines at one, after which he takes fifteen min- 
utes 5 rest and then reads; and at three o'clock he 
addresses, in a talk that is like another sermon, 
a large class of men — not the same men as in the 
morning. He is also sure to look in at the regular 
session of the Sunday-school. Home again, where 
hejstudies and reads until supper-time. At seven- 
thirty is the evening service, at which he again 
preaches and after which he shakes hands with 
several hundred more and talks personally, in his 
study, with any who have need of talk with him. 

149 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

He is usually home by ten-thirty. I spoke of it, 
one evening, as having been a strenuous day, and 
he responded, with a cheerfully whimsical smile: 
''Three sermons and shook hands with nine 
hundred/ ' 

That evening, as the service closed, he had 
said to the congregation: "I shall be here for 
an hour. We always have a pleasant time to- 
gether after service. If you are acquainted with 
me, come up and shake hands. If you are stran- 
gers" — just the slightest of pauses — "come up 
and let us make an acquaintance that will last 
for eternity." I remember how simply and easily 
this was said, in his clear, deep voice, and how 
impressive and important it seemed, and with 
what unexpectedness it came. "Come and make 
an acquaintance that will last for eternity!" 
And there was a serenity about his way of saying 
this which would make strangers think — just as 
he meant them to think — that he had nothing 
whatever to do but to talk with them. Even 
his own congregation have, most of them, little 
conception of how busy a man he is and how 
precious is his time. 

One evening last June — to take an evening of 
which I happened to know — he got home from a 
journey of two hundred miles at six o'clock, and 
after dinner and a slight rest went to the church 
prayer-meeting, which he led in his usual vigor- 
ous way at such meetings, playing the organ and 
leading the singing, as well as praying and talk- 

150 



SPLENDID EFFICIENCY 

ing. After the prayer-meeting he went to two 
dinners in succession, both of them important 
dinners in connection with the close of the uni- 
versity year, and at both dinners he spoke. At 
the second dinner he was notified of the sudden 
illness of a member of his congregation, and in- 
stantly hurried to the man's home and thence 
to the hospital to which he had been removed, 
and there he remained at the man's bedside, or 
in consultation with the physicians, until one in 
the morning. Next morning he was up at seven 
and again at work. 

"This one thing I do," is his private maxim of 
efficiency, and a literalist might point out that he 
does not one thing only, but a thousand things, 
not getting Conwell's meaning, which is that 
whatever the thing may be which he is doing 
he lets himself think of nothing else until it is 
done. 

Dr. Conwell has a profound love for the country 
and particularly for the country of his own youth. 
He loves the wind that comes sweeping over the 
hills, he loves the wide-stretching views from the 
heights and the forest intimacies of the nestled 
nooks. He loves the rippling streams, he loves 
the wild flowers that nestle in seclusion or that 
unexpectedly paint some mountain meadow with 
delight. He loves the very touch of the earth, 
and he loves the great bare rocks. 

He writes verses at times; at least he has writ- 
ten lines for a few old tunes; and it interested me 
11 151 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

greatly to chance upon some lines of his that 
picture heaven in terms of the Berkshires: 

The wide-stretching valleys in colors so fadeless, 
Where trees are all deathless and flowers e'er 
bloom. 

That is heaven in the eyes of a New England 
hill -man! Not golden pavement and ivory pal- 
aces, but valleys and trees and flowers and the 
wide sweep of the open. 

Few things please him more than to go, for 
example, blackberrying, and he has a knack of 
never scratching his face or his ringers when doing 
so. And he finds blackberrying, whether he goes 
alone or with friends, an extraordinarily good 
time for planning something he wishes to do or 
working out the thought of a sermon. And fish- 
ing is even better, for in fishing he finds immense 
recreation and restfulness and at the same time 
a further opportunity to think and plan. 

As a small boy he wished that he could throw 
a dam across the trout-brook that runs near the 
little Conwell home, and — as he never gives up — 
he finally realized the ambition, although it was 
after half a century ! And now he has a big pond, 
three-quarters of a mile long by half a mile wide, 
lying in front of the house, down a slope from it — 
a pond stocked with splendid pickerel. He likes 
to float about restfully on this pond, thinking 
or fishing, or both. And on that pond he showed 

152 



SPLENDID EFFICIENCY 

me how to catch pickerel even under a blaze of 
sunlight ! 

He is a trout-fisher, too, for it is a trout stream 
that feeds this pond and goes dashing away from 
it through the wilderness; and for miles adjoin- 
ing his place a fishing club of wealthy men bought 
up the rights in this trout stream, and they ap- 
proached him with a liberal offer. But he declined 
it. "I remembered what good times I had when 
I was a boy, fishing up and down that stream, 
and I couldn't think of keeping the boys of the 
present day from such a pleasure. So they may 
still come and fish for trout here." 

As we walked one day beside this brook, he 
suddenly said: "Did you ever notice that every 
brook has its own song? I should know the song 
of this brook anywhere." 

It would seem as if he loved his rugged native 
country because it is rugged even more than be- 
cause it is native! Himself so rugged, so hardy, 
so enduring — the strength of the hills is his also. 

Always, in his very appearance, you see some- 
thing of this ruggedness of the hills; a rugged- 
ness, a sincerity, a plainness, that mark alike his 
character and his looks. And always one realizes 
the strength of the man, even when his voice, as 
it usually is, is low. And one increasingly realizes 
the strength when, on the lecture platform or in 
the pulpit or in conversation, he flashes vividly 
into fire. 

A big-boned man he is, sturdy-framed, a tall 
i53 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

man, with broad shoulders and strong hands. 
His hair is a deep chestnut-brown that at first 
sight seems black. In his early manhood he was 
superb in looks, as his pictures show, but anxiety 
and work and the constant flight of years, with 
physical pain, have settled his face into lines of 
sadness and almost of severity, which instantly 
vanish when he speaks. And his face is illumined 
by marvelous eyes. 

He is a lonely man. The wife of his early years 
died long, long ago, before success had come, 
and she was deeply mourned, for she had loyally 
helped him through a time that held much of 
struggle and hardship. He married again; and 
this wife was his loyal helpmate for many years. 
In a time of special stress, when a defalcation of 
sixty-five thousand dollars threatened to crush 
Temple College just when it was getting on its 
feet, for both Temple Church and Temple Col- 
lege had in those early days buoyantly assumed 
heavy indebtedness, he raised every dollar he 
could by selling or mortgaging his own possessions, 
and in this his wife, as he lovingly remembers, 
most cordially stood beside him, although she 
knew that if anything should happen to him the 
financial sacrifice would leave her penniless. She 
died after years of companionship; his children 
married and made homes of their own; he is a 
lonely man. Yet he is not unhappy, for the tre- 
mendous demands of his tremendous work leave 
him little time for sadness or retrospect. At times 

154 



SPLENDID EFFICIENCY 

the realization comes that he is getting old, that 
friends and comrades have been passing away, 
leaving him an old man with younger friends and 
helpers. But such realization only makes him 
work with an earnestness still more intense, know- 
ing that the night cometh when no man shall work. 

Deeply religious though he is, he does not force 
religion into conversation on ordinary subjects 
or upon people who may not be interested in it. 
With him, it is action and good works, with faith 
and belief, that count, except when talk is the 
natural, the fitting, the necessary thing; when ad- 
dressing either one individual or thousands, he 
talks with superb effectiveness. 

His sermons are, it may almost literally be 
said, parable after parable; although he himself 
would be the last man to say this, for it would 
sound as if he claimed to model after the greatest 
of all examples. His own way of putting it is 
that he uses stories frequently because people are 
more impressed by illustrations than by argu- 
ment. 

Always, whether in the pulpit or out of it, he 
is simple and homelike, human and unaffected. 
If he happens to see some one in the congregation 
to whom he wishes to speak, he may just leave 
his pulpit and walk down the aisle, while the 
choir is singing, and quietly say a few words and 
return. 

In the early days of his ministry, if he heard 
of a poor family in immediate need of food he 

iS5 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

would be quite likely to gather a basket of pro- 
visions and go personally, and offer this assist- 
ance and such other as he might find necessary 
when he reached the place. As he became known 
he ceased from this direct and open method of 
charity, for he knew that impulsiveness would be 
taken for intentional display. But he has never 
ceased to be ready to help on the instant that he 
knows help is needed. Delay and lengthy in- 
vestigation are avoided by him when he can be 
certain that something immediate is required. 
And the extent of his quiet charity is amazing. 
With no family for which to save money, and with 
no care to put away money for himself, he thinks 
only of money as an instrument for helpfulness. 
I never heard a friend criticize him except for 
too great open-handedness. 

I was strongly impressed, after coming to know 
him, that he possessed many of the qualities that 
made for the success of the old-time district 
leaders of New York City, and I mentioned this 
to him, and he at once responded that he had 
himself met "Big Tim," the long-time leader of 
the Sullivans, and had had him at his house, Big 
Tim having gone to Philadelphia to aid some 
henchman in trouble, and having promptly sought 
the aid of Dr. Conwell. And it was character- 
istic of Conwell that he saw, what so many never 
saw, the most striking characteristic of that 
Tammany leader. For, "Big Tim Sullivan was 
so kind-hearted !" Conwell appreciated the man's 

156 



SPLENDID EFFICIENCY 

political unscrupulousness as well as did his ene- 
mies, but he saw also what made his underlying 
power — his kind-heartedness. Except that Sullivan 
could be supremely unscrupulous, and that Con- 
well is supremely scrupulous, there were marked 
similarities in these masters over men; and Con- 
well possesses, as Sullivan possessed, a wonder- 
ful memory for faces and names. 

Naturally, Russell Conwell stands steadily and 
strongly for good citizenship. But he never talks 
boastful Americanism. He seldom speaks in so 
many words of either Americanism or good citizen- 
ship, but he constantly and silently keeps the 
American flag, as the symbol of good citizenship, 
before his people. An American flag is prominent 
in his church ; an American flag is seen in his home ; 
a beautiful American flag is up at his Berkshire 
place and surmounts a lofty tower where, when 
he was a boy, there stood a mighty tree at the 
top of which was an eagle's nest, which has given 
him a name for his home, for he terms it "The 
Eagle's Nest." 

Remembering a long story that I had read of 
his climbing to the top of that tree, though it 
was a well-nigh impossible feat, and securing the 
nest by great perseverance and daring, I asked 
him if the story were a true one. "Oh, I've heard 
something about it; somebody said that some- 
body watched me, or something of the kind. But 
I don't remember anything about it myself." 

Any friend of his is sure to say something, 
iS7 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

after a while, about his determination, his in- 
sistence on going ahead with anything on which 
he has really set his heart. One of the very im- 
portant things on which he insisted, in spite of 
very great opposition, and especially an opposi- 
tion from the other churches of his denomina- 
tion (for this was a good many years ago, when 
there was much more narrowness in churches 
and sects than there is at present), was with re- 
gard to doing away with close communion. He 
determined on an open communion ; and his way 
of putting it, once decided upon, was: "My 
friends, it is not for me to invite you to the table 
of the Lord. The table of the Lord is open. If 
you feel that you can come to the table, it is open 
to you." And this is the form which he still uses. 

He not only never gives up, but, so his friends 
say, he never forgets a thing upon which he has 
once decided, and at times, long after they sup- 
posed the matter has been entirely forgotten, 
they suddenly find Dr. Conwell bringing his 
original purpose to pass. When I was told of 
this I remembered that pickerel - pond in the 
Berkshires ! 

If he is really set upon doing anything, little 
or big, adverse criticism does not disturb his 
serenity. Some years ago he began wearing a 
huge diamond, whose size attracted much criti- 
cism and caustic comment. He never said a word 
in defense; he just kept on wearing the diamond. 
One day, however, after some years, he took it 

158 



SPLENDID EFFICIENCY 

off, and people said, "He has listened to the 
criticism at last!" He smiled reminiscently as he 
told me about this, and said: "A dear old deacon 
of my congregation gave me that diamond and I 
did not like to hurt his feelings by refusing it. 
It really bothered me to wear such a glaring big 
thing, but because I didn't want to hurt the old 
deacon's feelings I kept on wearing it until he 
was dead. Then I stopped wearing it." 

The ambition of Russell Conwell is to continue 
working and working until the very last moment 
of his life. In work he forgets his sadness, his 
loneliness, his age. And he said to me one day, 
"I will die in harness." 



IX 



THE STORY OF "ACRES OF DIAMONDS*" 



CONSIDERING everything, the most re- 
markable thing in Russell Conwell's re- 
markable life is his lecture, "Acres of Diamonds." 
That is, the lecture itself, the number of times 
he has delivered it, what a source of inspiration 
it has been to myriads, the money that he has 
made and is making, and, still more, the purpose 
to which he directs the money. In the circum- 
stances surrounding " Acres of Diamonds," in 
its tremendous success, in the attitude of mind 
revealed by the lecture itself and by what Dr. 
Conwell does with it, it is illuminative of his 
character, his aims, his ability. 

The lecture is vibrant with his energy. It flashes 
with his hopefulness. It is full of his enthusiasm. 
It is packed full of his intensity. It stands for 
the possibilities of success in every one. He has 
delivered it over five thousand times. The de- 
mand for it never diminishes. The success grows 
never less. 

There is a time in Russell Conwell's youth of 
1 60 



THE LECTURE 

which it is pain for him to think. He told me of 
it one evening, and his voice sank lower and 
lower as he went far back into the past. It was 
of his days at Yale that he spoke, for they were 
days of suffering. For he had not money for 
Yale, and in working for more he endured bitter 
humiliation. It was not that the work was hard, 
for Russell Conwell has always been ready for 
hard work. It was not that there were privations 
and difficulties, for he has always found difficul- 
ties only things to overcome, and endured pri- 
vations with cheerful fortitude. But it was the 
humiliations that he met — the personal humili- 
ations that after more than half a century make 
him suffer in remembering them — yet out of those 
humiliations came a marvelous result. 

' 'I determined,' ' he Says, "that whatever I 
could do to make the way easier at college for 
other young men working their way I would do." 

And so, many years ago, he began to devote 
every dollar that he made from "Acres of Dia- 
monds" to this definite purpose. He has what 
may be termed a waiting-list. On that list are 
very few cases he has looked into personally. 
Infinitely busy man that he is, he cannot do ex- 
tensive personal investigation. A large propor- 
tion of his names come to him from college presi- 
dents who know of students in their own colleges 
in need of such a helping hand. 

"Every night," he said, when I asked him to 
tell me about it, "when my lecture is over and 

161 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

the check is in my hand, I sit down in my room 
in the hotel" — what a lonely picture, too! — "I 
sit down in my room in the hotel and subtract 
from the total sum received my actual expenses 
for that place, and make out a check for the dif- 
ference and send it to some young man on my 
list. And I always send with the check a letter 
of advice and helpfulness, expressing my hope 
that it will be of some service to him and telling 
him that he is to feel under no obligation except 
to his Lord. I feel strongly, and I try to make 
every young man feel, that there must be no sense 
of obligation to me personally. And I tell them 
that I am hoping to leave behind me men who 
will do more work than I have done. Don't 
think that I put in too much advice," he added, 
with a smile, "for I only try to let them know 
that a friend is trying to help them." 

His face lighted as he spoke. "There is such a 
fascination in it!" he exclaimed. "It is just like 
a gamble! And as soon as I have sent the letter 
and crossed a name off my list, I am aiming for 
the next one!" 

And after a pause he added: "I do not attempt 
to send any young man enough for all his ex- 
penses. But I want to save him from bitterness, 
and each check will help. And, too," he con- 
cluded, naively, in the vernacular, "I don't want 
them to lay down on me!" 

He told me that he made it clear that he did 
not wish to get returns or reports from this 

162 



THE LECTURE 

branch of his life-work, for it would take a great 
deal of time in watching and thinking and in 
the reading and writing of letters. "But it is 
mainly," he went on, "that I do not wish to hold 
over their heads the sense of obligation." 

When I suggested that this was surely an ex- 
ample of bread cast upon the waters that could 
not return, he was silent for a little and then said, 
thoughtfully: "As one gets on in years there is 
satisfaction in doing a thing for the sake of doing 
it. The bread returns in the sense of effort made." 

On a recent trip through Minnesota he was 
positively upset, so his secretary told me, through 
being recognized on a train by a young man who 
had been helped through "Acres of Diamonds," 
and who, finding that this was really Dr. Con- 
well, eagerly brought his wife to join him in most 
fervent thanks for his assistance. Both the hus- 
band and his wife were so emotionally overcome 
that it quite overcame Dr. Conwell himself. 

The lecture, to quote the noble words of Dr. 
Conwell himself, is designed to help "every per- 
son, of either sex, who cherishes the high resolve 
of sustaining a career of usefulness and honor." 
It is a lecture of helpfulness. And it is a lecture, 
when given with Con well's voice and face and 
manner, that is full of fascination. And yet it is 
all so simple! 

It is packed full of inspiration, of suggestion, 
of aid. He alters it to meet the local circum- 
stances of the thousands of different places in 

163 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

which he delivers it. But the base remains the 
same. And even those to whom it is an old story 
will go to hear him time after time. It amuses him 
to say that he knows individuals who have lis- 
tened to it twenty times. 

It begins with a story told to Conwell by an 
old Arab as the two journeyed together toward 
Nineveh, and, as you listen, you hear the actual 
voices and you see the sands of the desert and the 
waving palms. The lecturer's voice is so easy, 
so effortless, it seems so ordinary and matter-of- 
fact — yet the entire scene is instantly vital and 
alive! Instantly the man has his audience under 
a sort of spell, eager to listen, ready to be merry 
or grave. He has the faculty of control, the vital 
quality that makes the orator. 

The same people will go to hear this lecture 
over and over, and that is the kind of tribute 
that Conwell likes. I recently heard him deliver 
it in his own church, where it would naturally 
be thought to be an old story, and where, presum- 
ably, only a few of the faithful would go; but it 
was quite clear that all of his church are the 
faithful, for it was a large audience that came to 
listen to him; hardly a seat in the great audi- 
torium was vacant. And it should be added 
that, although it was in his own church, it was 
not a free lecture, where a throng might be ex- 
pected, but that each one paid a liberal sum for 
a seat — and the paying of admission is always a 
practical test of the sincerity of desire to hear, 

164 



THE LECTURE 

And the people were swept along by the current 
as if lecturer and lecture were of novel interest. 
The lecture in itself is good to read, but it is only 
when it is illumined by Con well's vivid person- 
ality that one understands how it influences in 
the actual delivery. 

On that particular evening he had decided to 
give the lecture in the same form as when he first 
delivered it many years ago, without any of the 
alterations that have come with time and chang- 
ing localities, and as he went on, with the audi- 
ence rippling and bubbling with laughter as usual, 
he never doubted that he was giving it as he had 
given it years before; and yet — so up-to-date and 
alive must he necessarily be, in spite of a definitive 
effort to set himself back — every once in a while 
he was coming out with illustrations from such 
distinctly recent things as the automobile ! 

The last time I heard him was the 5,124th time 
for the lecture. Doesn't it seem incredible! 5,124 
times! I noticed that he was to deliver it at a 
little out-of-the-way place, difficult for any con- 
siderable number to get to, and I wondered just 
how much of an audience would gather and how 
they would be impressed. So I went over from 
where I was, a few miles away. The road was 
dark and I pictured a small audience, but when 
I got there I found the church building in which 
he was to deliver the lecture had a seating ca- 
pacity of 830 and that precisely 830 people were 
already seated there and that a fringe of others 

165 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

were standing behind. Many had come from 
miles away. Yet the lecture had scarcely, if at 
all, been advertised. But people had said to one 
another: ' 'Aren't you going to hear Dr. Conwell?" 
And the word had thus been passed along. 

I remember how fascinating it was to watch 
that audience, for they responded so keenly and 
with such heartfelt pleasure throughout the en- 
tire lecture. And not only were they immensely 
pleased and amused and interested — and to 
achieve that at a crossroads church was in it- 
self a triumph to be proud of — but I knew that 
every listener was given an impulse toward doing 
something for himself and for others, and that 
with at least some of them the impulse would 
materialize in acts. Over and over one realizes 
what a power such a man wields. 

And what an unselfishness! For, far on in 
years as he is, and suffering pain, he does not 
chop down his lecture to a definite length; he 
does not talk for just an hour or go on grudgingly 
for an hour and a half. He sees that the people 
are fascinated and inspired, and he forgets pain, 
ignores time, forgets that the night is late and that 
he has a long journey to go to get home, and 
keeps on generously for two hours! And every 
one wishes it were four. 

Always he talks with ease and sympathy. 
There are geniality, composure, humor, simple 
and homely jests — yet never does the audience 
forget that he is every moment in tremendous 

166 



RUSSELL CON WELL IN THE CIVIL WAR 



THE LECTURE 

earnest. They bubble with responsive laughter 
or are silent in riveted attention. A stir can be 
seen to sweep over an audience, of earnestness or 
surprise or amusement or resolve. When he is 
grave and sober or fervid the people feel that he 
is himself a fervidly earnest man, and when he is 
telling something humorous there is on his part 
almost a repressed chuckle, a genial appreciation 
of the fun of it, not in the least as if he were laugh- 
ing at his own humor, but as if he and his hearers 
were laughing together at something of which they 
were all humorously cognizant. 

Myriad successes in life have come through the 
direct inspiration of this single lecture. One hears 
of so many that there must be vastly more that 
are never told. A few of the most recent were 
told me by Dr. Conwell himself, one being of 
a farmer boy who walked a long distance to hear 
him. On his way home, so the boy, now a man, 
has written him, he thought over and over of 
what he could do to advance himself, and before 
he reached home he learned that a teacher was 
wanted at a certain country school. He knew 
he did not know enough to teach, but was sure he 
could learn, so he bravely asked for the place. 
And something in his earnestness made him win 
a temporary appointment. Thereupon he worked 
and studied so hard and so devotedly, while he 
daily taught, that within a few months he was 
regularly employed there. "And now," says 
Conwell, abruptly, with his characteristic skim- 

12 167 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

ming over of the intermediate details between the 
important beginning of a thing and the satisfac- 
tory end, "and now that young man is one of 
our college presidents," 

And very recently a lady came to Dr. Con- 
well, the wife of an exceptionally prominent man 
who was earning a large salary, and she told him 
that her husband was so unselfishly generous 
with money that often they were almost in straits. 
And she said they had bought a little farm as a 
country place, paying only a few hundred dollars 
for it, and that she had said to herself, laugh- 
ingly, after hearing the lecture, "There are no 
acres of diamonds on this place!" But she also 
went on to tell that she had found a spring of 
exceptionally fine water there, although in buy- 
ing they had scarcely known of the spring at all; 
and she had been so inspired by Conwell that she 
had had the water analyzed and, finding that it 
was remarkably pure, had begun to have it bottled 
and sold under a trade name as special spring 
water. And she is making money. And she also 
sells pure ice from the pool, cut in winter-time — 
and all because of "Acres of Diamonds"! 

Several millions of dollars, in all, have been re- 
ceived by Russell Conwell as the proceeds from 
this single lecture. Such a fact is almost stagger- 
ing — and it is more staggering to realize what 
good is done in the world by this man, who does 
not earn for himself, but uses his money in im- 
mediate helpfulness. And one can neither think 

168 



THE LECTURE 

nor write with moderation when it is further 
realized that far more good than can be done 
directly with money he does by uplifting and in- 
spiring with this lecture. Always his heart is 
with the weary and the heavy-laden. Always 
he stands for self -betterment. 

Last year, 19 14, he and his work were given 
unique recognition. For it was known by his 
friends that this particular lecture was approach- 
ing its five-thousandth delivery, and they planned 
a celebration of such an event in the history of the 
most popular lecture in the world. Dr. Conwell 
agreed to deliver it in the Academy of Music, in 
Philadelphia, and the building was packed and 
the streets outside were thronged. The proceeds 
from all sources for that five-thousandth lecture 
were over nine thousand dollars. 

The hold which Russell Conwell has gained on 
the affections and respect of his home city was 
seen not only in the thousands who strove to 
hear him, but in the prominent men who served 
on the local committee in charge of the celebra- 
tion. There was a national committee, too, and 
the nation-wide love that he has won, the nation- 
wide appreciation of what he has done and is 
still doing, was shown by the fact that among the 
names of the notables on this committee were 
those of nine governors of states. The Governor 
of Pennsylvania was himself present to do Russell 
Conwell honor, and he gave to him a key em- 
blematic of the Freedom of the State, 

169 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

The " Freedom of the State' ' — yes; this man, 
well over seventy, has won it. The Freedom of 
the State, the Freedom of the Nation — for this 
man of helpfulness, this marvelous exponent of 
the gospel of success, has worked marvelously for 
the freedom, the betterment, the liberation, the 
advancement, of the individual. 



FIFTY YEARS ON THE LECTURE 
PLATFORM 



BY 

Russell H. Conwell 



AN Autobiography! What an absurd request! 
r\ If all the conditions were favorable, the story 
of my public life could not be made interesting. 
It does not seem possible that any will care to 
read so plain and uneventful a tale. I see nothing 
in it for boasting, nor much that could be helpful. 
Then I never saved a scrap of paper intentionally 
concerning my work to which I could refer, not 
a book, not a sermon, not a lecture, not a news- 
paper notice or account, not a magazine article, 
not one of the kind biographies written from time 
to time by noble friends have I ever kept even as 
a souvenir, although some of them may be in my 
library. I have ever felt that the writers concern- 
ing my life were too generous and that my own 
work was too hastily done. Hence I have noth- 
ing upon which to base an autobiographical ac- 
count, except the recollections which come to an 
overburdened mind. 

My general view of half a century on the lec- 
ture platform brings to me precious and beauti- 
ful memories, and fills my soul with devout grati- 
tude for the blessings and kindnesses which have 
been given to me so far beyond my deserts. 
So much more success has come to my hands 

i73 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

than I ever expected; so much more of good 
have I found than even youth's wildest dream 
included; so much more effective have been my 
weakest endeavors than I ever planned or hoped — 
that a biography written truthfully would be 
mostly an account of what men and women have 
done for me. 

I have lived to see accomplished far more than 
my highest ambition included, and have seen the 
enterprises I have undertaken rush by me, pushed 
on by a thousand strong hands until they have 
left me far behind them. The realities are like 
dreams to me. Blessings on the loving hearts and 
noble minds who have been so willing to sacri- 
fice for others' good and to think only of what 
they could do, and never of what they should get ! 
Many of them have ascended into the Shining 
Land, and here I am in mine age gazing up alone, 

Only waiting till the shadows 
Are a little longer grown. 

Fifty years! I was a young man, not yet of 
age, when I delivered my first platform lecture. 
The Civil War of 1861-65 drew on with all its 
passions, patriotism, horrors, and fears, and I was 
studying law at Yale University. I had from 
childhood felt that I was " called to the ministry. " 
The earliest event of memory is the prayer of 
my father at family prayers in the little old cot- 
tage in the Hampshire highlands of the Berk- 
shire Hills, calling on God with a sobbing voice 

*74 



ON THE PLATFORM 

to lead me into some special service for the Sav- 
iour. It filled me with awe, dread, and fear, and 
I recoiled from the thought, until I determined 
to fight against it with all my power. So I sought 
for other professions and for decent excuses for 
being anything but a preacher. 

Yet while I was nervous and timid before the 
class in declamation and dreaded to face any 
kind of an audience, I felt in my soul a strange 
impulsion toward public speaking which for years 
made me miserable. The war and the public 
meetings for recruiting soldiers furnished an out- 
let for my suppressed sense of duty, and my first 
lecture was on the "Lessons of History" as ap- 
plied to the campaigns against the Confederacy. 

That matchless temperance orator and loving 
friend, John B. Gough, introduced me to the little 
audience in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1862. 
What a foolish little school-boy speech it must 
have been! But Mr. Gough's kind words of 
praise, the bouquets and the applause, made me 
feel that somehow the way to public oratory 
would not be so hard as I had feared. 

From that time I acted on Mr. Gough's advice 
and "sought practice " by accepting almost every 
invitation I received to speak on any kind of a 
subject. There were many sad failures and tears, 
but it was a restful compromise with my conscience 
concerning the ministry, and it pleased my friends. 
I addressed picnics, Sunday-schools, patriotic 
meetings, funerals, anniversaries, commencements, 

J 75 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

debates, cattle-shows, and sewing-circles without 
partiality and without price. For the first five 
years the income was all experience. Then vol- 
untary gifts began to come occasionally in the 
shape of a jack-knife, a ham, a book, and the 
first cash remuneration was from a farmers* club, 
of seventy-five cents toward the "horse hire." 
It was a curious fact that one member of that 
club afterward moved to Salt Lake City and was 
a member of the committee at the Mormon 
Tabernacle in 1872 which, when I was a corre- 
spondent, on a journey around the world, employed 
me to lecture on "Men of the Mountains" in the 
Mormon Tabernacle, at a fee of five hundred dol- 
lars. 

While I was gaining practice in the first years 
of platform work, I had the good fortune to have 
profitable employment as a soldier, or as a cor- 
respondent or lawyer, or as^an editor or as a 
preacher, which enabled me to pay my own ex- 
penses, and it has been seldom in the fifty years 
that I have ever taken a fee for my personal use. 
In the last thirty-six years I have dedicated 
solemnly all the lecture income to benevolent 
enterprises. If I am antiquated enough for an 
autobiography, perhaps I may be aged enough to 
avoid the criticism of being an egotist, when I 
state that some years I delivered one lecture, 
"Acres of Diamonds," over two hundred times 
each year, at an average income of about one hun- 
dred and fifty dollars for each lecture. 

176 



ON THE PLATFORM 

It was a remarkable good fortune which came 
to me as a lecturer when Mr. James Redpath 
organized the first lecture bureau ever established. 
Mr. Redpath was the biographer of John Brown 
of Harper's Ferry renown, and as Mr. Brown had 
been long a friend of my father's I found employ- 
ment, while a student on vacation, in selling that 
life of John Brown. That acquaintance with Mr. 
Redpath was maintained until Mr. Redpath's 
death. To General Charles H. Taylor, with 
whom I was employed for a time as reporter for 
the Boston Daily Traveler, I was indebted for many 
acts of self-sacrificing friendship which soften my 
soul as I recall them. He did me the greatest 
kindness when he suggested my name to Mr. 
Redpath as one who could "fill in the vacancies 
in the smaller towns" where the "great lights 
could not always be secured. " 

What a glorious galaxy of great names that 
original list of Redpath lecturers contained! 
Henry Ward Beecher, John B. Gough, Senator 
Charles Sumner, Theodore Tilton, Wendell Phil- 
lips, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, Bayard Taylor, 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, with many of the great 
preachers, musicians, and writers of that remark- 
able era. Even Dr. Holmes, John Whittier, 
Henry W. Longfellow, John Lothrop Motley, 
George William Curtis, and General Burnside 
were persuaded to appear one or more times, 
although they refused to receive pay. I cannot 
forget how ashamed I felt when my name ap- 

177 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

peared in the shadow of such names, and how 
sure I was that every acquaintance was ridiculing 
me behind my back. Mr. Bayard Taylor, however, 
wrote me from the Tribune office a kind note 
saying that he was glad to see me "on the road to 
great usefulness." Governor Clafflin, of Massa- 
chusetts, took the time to send me a note of con- 
gratulation. General Benjamin F. Butler, how- 
ever, advised me to "stick to the last" and be a 
good lawyer. 

The work of lecturing was always a task and 
a duty. I do not feel now that I ever sought to 
be an entertainer. I am sure I would have been 
an utter failure but for the feeling that I must 
preach some gospel truth in my lectures and do at 
least that much toward that ever-persistent "call of 
God." When I entered the ministry (1879) I na d 
become so associated with the lecture platform in 
America and England that I could not feel justi- 
fied in abandoning so great a field of usefulness. 

The experiences of all our successful lecturers 
are probably nearly alike. The way is not always 
smooth. But the hard roads, the poor hotels, 
the late trains, the cold halls, the hot church 
auditoriums, the overkindness of hospitable com- 
mittees, and the broken hours of sleep are an- 
noyances one soon forgets; and the hosts of in- 
telligent faces, the messages of thanks, and the 
effects of the earnings on the lives of young col- 
lege men can never cease to be a daily joy. God 
bless them all. 

178 



ON THE PLATFORM 

Often have I been asked if I did not, in fifty 
years of travel in all sorts of conveyances, meet 
with accidents. It is a marvel to me that no such 
event ever brought me harm. In a continuous 
period of over twenty-seven years I delivered 
about two lectures in every three days, yet I did 
not miss a single engagement. Sometimes I had 
to hire a special train, but I reached the town on 
time, with only a rare exception, and then I was 
but a few minutes late. Accidents have pre- 
ceded and followed me on trains and boats, and 
were sometimes in sight, but I was preserved 
without injury through all the years. In the 
Johnstown flood region I saw a bridge go out be- 
hind our train. I was once on a derelict steamer 
on the Atlantic for twenty-six days. At another 
time a man was killed in the berth of a sleeper I 
had left half an hour before. Often have I felt 
the train leave the track, but no one was killed. 
Robbers have several times threatened my life, 
but all came out without loss to me. God and man 
have ever been patient with me. 

Yet this period of lecturing has been, after all, 
a side issue. The Temple, and its church, in 
Philadelphia, which, when its membership was 
less than three thousand members, for so many 
years contributed through its membership over 
sixty thousand dollars a year for the uplift of 
humanity, has made life a continual surprise ; while 
the Samaritan Hospital's amazing growth, and the 
Garretson Hospital's dispensaries, have been sq 

179 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

continually ministering to the sick and poor, and 
have done such skilful work for the tens of thou- 
sands who ask for their help each year, that I 
have been made happy while away lecturing by 
the feeling that each hour and minute they were 
faithfully doing good. Temple University, which 
was founded only twenty-seven years ago, has 
already sent out into a higher income and nobler 
life nearly a hundred thousand young men and 
women who could not probably have obtained an 
education in any other institution. The faithful, 
self-sacrificing faculty, now numbering two hundred 
and fifty- three professors, have done the real 
work. For that I can claim but little credit; 
and I mention the University here only to show 
that my "fifty years on the lecture platform" 
has necessarily been a side line of work. 

My best-known lecture, "Acres of Diamonds," 
was a mere accidental address, at first given be- 
fore a reunion of my old comrades of the Forty- 
sixth Massachusetts Regiment, which served in 
the Civil War and in which I was captain. I 
had no thought of giving the address again, and 
even after it began to be called for by lecture 
committees I did not dream that I should live 
to deliver it, as I now have done, almost five 
thousand times. "What is the secret of its popu- 
larity ? M I could never explain to myself or others. 
I simply know that I always attempt to enthuse 
myself on each occasion with the idea that it is 
a special opportunity to do good, an4 I interest 

j 80 



ON THE PLATFORM 

myself in each community and apply the general 
principles with local illustrations. 

The hand which now holds this pen must in 
the natural course of events soon cease to gesture 
on the platform, and it is a sincere, prayerful hope 
that this book will go on into the years doing in- 
creasing good for the aid of my brothers and sis- 
ters in the human family. 

Russell H. Conwell. 

South Worthington, Mass., 
September i, 191 j. 



THE END 






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